Preamble

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Economic Growth

Mr. Alton: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the present rate of growth of the United Kingdom economy.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Nigel Lawson): Output this year is expected to be about 3 per cent. higher than last year.

Mr. Alton: Is there not a note of complacency in what the Chancellor has just told the House? Does he agree that, if the CBI figures are right, next year's growth could be only 2 per cent., which will inevitably mean that we will stabilise the present level of unemployment? Given that there are now more than 3 million people out of work, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we need to improve the level of growth? Is he not worried that too much of this year's growth was based on personal borrowing, not on genuine manufacturing improvements?

Mr. Lawson: The hon. Gentleman has asked a number of questions. Of course there is great concern about the level of unemployment, but there is room for cautious satisfaction that the rate of unemployment appears to have levelled off and that employment is rising for the first time since the recession began.
As for the outcome for next year, the Treasury has made its best forecast and the Treasury's track record in forecasting, as the hon. Gentleman knows, is considerably better than that of outside bodies. The forecast of the European Commission is that our growth next year will be higher than that of any other country in the Community, as, indeed, it has been this year.

Mr. Ian Lloyd: In the context of the comments on the radio this moring on the very favourable OECD report on Britain's economic performance, did my right hon. Friend by any chance hear the grotesque piece of economic blasphemy from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), in which he referred to the Labour party's ragbag of discredited policies as being the equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount? If any comparison is to be made, surely the only comparison would be with Mount Desolation.

Mr. Lawson: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The record of the right hon. Member for Birmingham,

Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) as a forecaster is wed known to the House. My right hon. and hon. Friends will remember, for example, that during the election campaign he said:
There is no doubt that inflation will be in double figures by the end of this year if this Government remains in office.

Mr. Straw: Does the Chancellor agree that no country among the major industrialised countries has suffered a greater collapse in industrial and manufacturing output than Britain under this Conservative Administration betweeen 1979 and 1983? As the right hon. Gentleman is so full of seasonal good cheer, will he say when manufacturing output will return to the level of May 1979? Will that be before, or after, 1990?

Mr. Lawson: I do not know when manufacturing output will be at the 1979 level. What is encouraging is that output as a whole is already back to the level that it was at the peak in 1979 and is continuing to rise.

Mr. Alan Howarth: With regard to the present rate of growth in the United Kingdom economy, I note that my right hon. Friend recently happily assumed the duties of Father Christmas. Having regard to prospective rates of growth, will he now go further and, as fairy godmother, wave his wand so as to endow our friends in the United State of America, in the interests of us all, with a medium-term financial strategy?

Mr. Lawson: I do not have a magic wand, so I am unable to perform that miracle, although it would be desirable if it were brought about. However, I am grateful for the role in which my hon. Friend casts me. It is rather better than the role of The Ghost of Christmas Past, which was the role adopted by the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook on the radio this morning.

Tax Revenue

Mr. Hal Miller: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the current annual rate of revenue from the following taxes: (a) special car tax,(b) vehicle excise duty, and (c) excise duty on hydrocarbon fuels.

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Ian Stewart): The estimates included in table 1.8 of the Autumn Statement for 1983–84 are: (a) car tax £625 million, (b) vehicle excise duty £1,968 million, and (c) excise duty on hydrocarbon oils £5,625 million.

Mr. Miller: Will my hon. Friend acknowledge the contribution that the motor industry is making to the economy and to the Exchequer? Will he, in the coming weeks, carefully reflect on whether that contribution might increase if the rate of tax is slightly reduced?

Mr. Stewart: My right hon. Friend and I will be reflecting on all these matters in the coming weeks. I am happy to acknowledge the performance of the motor industry, in recent years, after a very difficult period, and I acknowledge the interest and assistance that my hon. Friend has given in that direction. However, the level of taxation on motoring, although it is substantial, cannot be too great a disincentive, since in the first 11 months of this year car sales were an all-time record of 1·72 million.

Gas and Electricity

Mr. Rooker: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the estimated annual contribution to the Exchequer of the gas and electricity industries.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Peter Rees): Both industries make payments of VAT and other taxes and duties in common with industry generally. The British Gas Corporation also incurred liability for £523 million in respect of gas levy and £208 million in respect of corporation tax for the financial year 1982–83. None of the electricity industries is currently paying corporation tax.

Mr. Rooker: Can the Chief Secretary explain what happened to the Secretary of State for Energy who before the election was fighting to keep electricity prices down but since being transferred to become Chancellor of the Exchequer has been fighting to put them up? It was not just the fact, was it, of taking up residence in a taxpayer-funded house?

Mr. Rees: The hon. Gentleman is straining a little to achieve a rather meretricious effect. Electricity prices will have been frozen for a year by April of next year, at a time when the retail price index will probably have gone up by about 5 per cent., which indicates a fall in electricity prices in real terms.

Mr. Pavitt: Has the right hon. and learned Gentleman had my experience since the beginning of October at advice bureaux for constituents of not a week going by without an elderly person, because of the housing benefit impact, coming in with an electricity or gas bill which he or she is unable to meet and one has to intervene to prevent the service being cut off? Will the Minister—as a good new year's gift, as it were—do something in conjuction with the Secretary of State for Energy to achieve a more equitable arrangement for energy prices?

Mr. Rees: I have not yet had the same experience as the hon. Gentleman, but if such a person were to come into my advice bureau I should say that we were contributing about £350 million a year to assist the less well off with their heating costs and that that benefited about 1 million gas consumers and 2 million electricity consumers, half of whom were old-age pensioners. I should also emphasise to such a hypothetical visitor that that was about three times what the last Labour Government ever did.

Mr. Budgen: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that those who visit my advice surgeries always complain about any increase in prices, but that as they leave they remark that it is better to have level price increases than to have the old distortion which was in favour of the domestic consumer and very much against industry, on which they know they depend?

Mr. Rees: I know that my hon. Friend gives his constituents sound economic advice. He may care to add to the information that he imparts to them the fact that during the last Labour Government domestic electricity prices went up by 170 per cent.

Taxation (Reduction)

Mr. Dubs: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is satisfied that current economic indicators confirm he will be able to achieve reductions in tax.

Mr. Lawson: Provided that we maintain firm control of public expenditure, I remain confident that we shall be able to reduce the level of taxation during the lifetime of this Parliament.

Mr. Dubs: Is not the truth that the Cabinet is going through desperate contortions in an effort to reduce taxes next April and that if that is achieved it will be at the expense of pensioners who cannot afford to pay their electricity bills, people who are in receipt of housing benefit and people who are desperately in need of decent local government services, which will be cut as a result of the Government's policies?

Mr. Lawson: The Government have published public expenditure plans for 1984–85, and I am sure that the House agrees that they are a prudent compromise between what is necessary to maintain essential public services and what is necessary to maintain a gradually declining proportion of our total national output accounted for by public expenditure, for the benefit of the economy as a whole and to give headroom for tax decreases, especially in the lifetime of this Parliament.

Sir William Clark: Did my right hon. Friend hear on the radio this morning the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) advocating not only a reduction in taxation but, at the same time, an increase in public expenditure? Does my right hon. Friend agree that such a policy would be disastrous for the economy, as it would increase not only overspending but interest rates, which would hit industry and cause the loss of many more jobs?

Mr. Lawson: My hon. Friend is right in saying that such an action would lead to a resurgence of the inflationary spiral which occurred when the Labour party was last in office.

Mr. Wainwright: Will the prospective increases in gross domestic product enable the Chancellor, even on his terms, to allow a larger amount of public sector borrowing than he had intended? If that is so, will that not provide leeway for urgently needed reductions in taxes on jobs and low pay?

Mr. Lawson: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman, in contrast to right hon. and hon. Members of the official Opposition, seeks to achieve lower taxation. I am sure that that is what the economy and the nation need. Public borrowing as a proportion of GDP must still be decreased.

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, now that the economy is showing signs of growth and he is giving his mind to tax reductions, it is important to raise the tax threshold so that those on the lowest incomes are relieved of some of their problems?

Mr. Lawson: I agree with my hon. Friend. There is a strong case for raising the tax threshold as soon as we can do so responsibly. It is especially bad that the poor pay such a large proportion of their income in taxation as they do at present. The only solution to that problem is to maintain firm control of public expenditure, and that is something to which the Opposition are antipathetic.

Tax Revenue

Mr. Straw: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the estimated yield from all sources of taxation,
including excise and other duties, for 1983–84; and what was the comparable yield in 1978–79 revalued at 1983–84 prices.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. John Moore): The estimated total of taxes, rates, and national insurance contributions is £117 billion in 1983–84; the yield in 1978–79 revalued to 1983–84 prices using the GDP deflator was £100 billion.

Mr. Straw: Are not those figures, which show that under this Government taxation has increased by £17 billion a year in real terms, a staggering indictment of the economic record of mismanagement by the Government who promised in 1979 and 1983 that taxes would be reduced? Do they not show also that, whatever so-called pledges the Chancellor may now be making, there is no prospect of getting taxation back to the 1979 level during the lifetime of this Government?

Mr. Moore: The figures show that, apart from facing such problems as the world recession, the Government, when they first came into office four and a half years ago, had to break the pattern of Socialist inflation and repay the absurd level of international external debt with which the Labour Government had saddled this country.

Public Expenditure

Mr. Eggar: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he expects to publish the discussion document on long-term public expenditure options.

Mr. Peter Rees: The Government welcome the current public debate on the prospects for public expenditure and are considering the precise form and timing of their further contribution to that debate.

Mr. Eggar: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it is essential that the public debate occurs on a Treasury document which sets out realistically the options open to the Government? That is essential, not only so that the level of public participation is increased, but so that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) realises what the reality is. It is obvious, after listening to his radio interview today, that he has no idea of the reality.

Mr. Rees: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. If there is to be a meaningful debate on the subject it should be on a proper factual basis rather than on the hysterical misinformation which the right hon. Gentleman demonstrated this morning.

Mr. David Atkinson: Will my right hon. and learned Friend assure the House that the options to be considered by him include the original Beveridge concept of the welfare state, which still exists today, but is based on conditions in the 1930s and may not match the needs of society half a century later?

Mr. Rees: Many assumptions made immediately after the war may have to be revised, but I should not like to forecast the precise course of the debate.

Economic Recovery

Mr. Ward: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will publish figures to compare the progress of the recovery in the United Kingdom with that of each other European country.

Mr. Lawson: The European Commission expects faster growth in the United Kingdom than in any other member country both this year and next. I will circulate the Commission's figures in the Official Report.

Mr. Ward: Does my right hon. Friend agree that we could accelerate our lead over much of the rest of the Community by reducing Government expenditure still further? Is it not better for the taxpayer, rather than the Government, to decide how money should be spent, especially in relation to regional aid and grants to bodies such as the Arts Council, the Sports Council and so on?

Mr. Lawson: My hon. Friend will be aware of the Government's new proposals for regional assistance recently outlined by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. I confirm that it is our policy to maintain firm control of public expenditure fat- the purposes that he mentioned, I am hopeful that in the next three years we shall be able to maintain total public expenditure broadly constant in real terms.

Mr. Wainwright: Does the Chancellor agree that the United Kingdom lead in European recovery as shown in the OECD report is largely based on the natural bounty of North sea oil? What do the Government intend to eo about the state of our manufacturing industry and the supply side of the economy, which the OECD severely criticised?

Mr. Lawson: The criticism was a gross overstatement. North sea oil accounts for about 5 per cent. of the economy, so it must be kept in perspective, important though it is. The performance of the supply side of the economy is, of course, vital. That is why we are so determined to reduce the burden of taxation, because high taxation is inimical to the efficient working of the supply side. That is also why we are reforming trade union law, to make the labour market work better, and pursuing policies of privatisation and competition.

Sir Dudley Smith: Does my right hon. Friend agree that anyone with reservations about the success of the Government's recovery programme has only to look across the Channel to France, where Socialist management really equates with inflation?

Mr. Boyes: That is not true.

Mr. Lawson: Sadly, it is indeed true that at present the worst performance among the major European countries is that of Socialist France, because when the Socialist Government came to power they embarked on policies of the type advocated by the British Labour party. After little more than a year, however, they had the wisdom to recognise the folly of their ways, They have now changed to policies much closer to those pursued by the United Kingdom and I hope that in clue course there will be an improvement in their economic performance.

Dr. McDonald: Would it not be better to make comparisons with the rate of growth in the United States, which is expected to be 5 per cent. next year as a result of policies which the Prime Minister so viciously condemned at Question Time recently? Is it not time that the Government abandoned policies which resulted in a nil rate of growth between 1979 and September 1983, stopped fantasising about the rate of the growth in the United Kingdom next year, followed an American-type boom and allowed us to experience the growth now being enjoyed by the United States?

Mr. Lawson: I am pleased, if a little surprised, at the hon. Lady's enthusiasm for President Reagan and his policies. That is not evident every day in the House of Commons. The Americans have pursued a policy of tight control of the money supply, though not of the fiscal deficit. They also have another advantage—there is no Socialist party in the United States.

The figures are as follows:


GDP* growth



1983
1984


United Kingdom
2·8
2·2


Belgium
−0·9
−0.6


Denmark
2·2
1·2


Germany
0·7
2·1


Greece
−0·2
1·5


France
−0·3
0·4


Ireland
0·5
1·8


Italy
−0·8
1·5


Luxembourg
−2·4
−1·0


Netherlands
0·3
0·0


EC average
0·5
1·5


* The figure for the United Kingdom is GDP (0).

Job Creation

Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the recent meeting of the National Economic Development Council about the creation of new jobs.

Mr. Lawson: For the council meeting on 7 December I submitted a paper on this subject, as did the TUC. At the meeting there was a wide measure of agreement, and discussions are taking place about a programme of further work.

Mr. Hamilton: It is suggested that at the meeting of the NEDC the Chancellor put forward a proposition that new jobs would come primarily from the service sector. As we have lost 2·5 million jobs during the recession, mostly in manufacturing, how on earth does he expect to replace those jobs from the service sector? Is it not the case that during a brilliant exposition on the radio this morning —[Interruption.]—supported by the CBI no less, it was shown that unless there is increased public expenditure on the infrastructure, on housing, transport and the rest, we shall not return to the employment and opportunities that we had even in 1979?

Mr. Lawson: The hon. Gentleman is becoming one of the best stand-up comics in the House.

Mr. Hamilton: Bettered only by the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Lawson: I am glad to be able to tell the hon. Gentleman that the despair which seems to inform his views on employment was not shared by anyone around the NEDC table, which included the TUC, which did not feel that there was a lack of hope or any feeling of despair. Employment in manufacturing has been declining since 1966. It now accounts for about 25 per cent. of this country's employment. The hon. Gentleman should also be aware that employment is now rising. The most up-to-date figures show an increase in employment during the second quarter of this year for the first time since the recession began.

Mr. Gregory: In view of the expectation of growth in the service sector, will my right hon. Friend give greater recognition in taxation terms in the forthcoming Budget to insurance, banking and tourism?

Mr. Lawson: My hon. Friend is asking me about the forthcoming Budget, about which I cannot speak. Certainly the contribution made by the service industries to the economy is of first importance.

Mr. Foulkes: Since one of the Government's few job creation strategies is the creation of experimental free ports, will the Chancellor tell the House when he expects to announce which areas are to be created free ports? Will he confirm that one is to be in Scotland, preferably at Prestwick airport?

Mr. Lawson: I believe that there is a later question on the Order Paper about free ports.

Mr. Adley: Is my right hon. Friend aware that I thought his paper to the NEDC was extremely good, and that the statement on regional policy by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was also good, because it at last recognised the importance of the service industry,in the economy? May we take it,therefore, that the Government have, once and for all, buried the myth that manufacturing jobs are the only worthwhile ones?

Mr. Lawson: The Government have buried all myths. They are prosecuting the conduct of economic policy in a spirit of realism. I should like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the sterling work that he has done over the years to ensure that successive Governments do not overlook the performance of the service industries.

Mercury

Mr. Martin Stevens: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many contracts with Mercury have been entered into by Her Majesty's Government or by publicly-owned bodies.

Mr. Moore: Mercury's service has only just become available, on a limited geographical basis. As yet, therefore, no contracts with Mercury have been entered into by Government Departments. Where Mercury can offer the particular services required it will be given the opportunity to tender in the normal way.

Mr. Stevens: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Is he satisfied that the Central Computer Telecommunications Agency is operating in a sufficiently entrepreneurial form? Will he direct it to seek competitive tenders at all times and improve its performance in what appears to be a somewhat bureaucratic form of ordering?

Mr. Moore: I am happy to assure my hon. Friend that it is normal Government practice to secure competitive tenders. To the extent to which the CCTA already follows normal Government practice, I am sure that my hon. Friend will be satisfied.

Northern Region

Mr. Campbell-Savours: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the implication for the Northern region of the policies in the Autumn Statement.

Mr. Peter Rees: The Government's economic policies, which are confirmed in the Autumn Statement, offer the best hope for sustainable non-inflationary growth, from which the Northern region should benefit.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: That is a very complacent reply. Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the Autumn Statement provided little Christmas cheer for the region and little long-term hope for the future? Is he further aware that areas such as my own in west Cumberland and the county of Cumbria have failed miserably to attract the high technology industries that have been the salvation of many areas in the south of England? When the Chancellor introduces his next Budget, will he incorporate some tax measures wth a regional base that will enable us to attract those industries for our future?

Mr. Rees: I cannot anticipate the Budget of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, but I remind the House that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry emphasised that the Government remain firmly committed to an effective regional policy. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to take back a message of cheer to his constituency, I remind him and the House that steel production in the third quarter of 1983 was 21 per cent. higher than a year earlier—

Mr. Campbell-Savours: We do not produce steel.

Mr. Rees: I remind the hon. Gentleman and the House that the British Steel Corporation in Workington recently won a £10 million order and supplied 34,000 tonnes of track to the New Zealand railway. That is a better message than the hon. Gentleman has given.

Mr. Fallon: Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that the whingeing pessimism of Opposition Members does no service to the Northern region? Does he further accept that nationally imposed wage levels and excessive business rates have done as much harm to the Northern region as anything else?

Mr. Rees: My hon. Friend conveys a much more robust message to the Northern region than Opposition Members. I believe that the Northern region would welcome it. I agree that the rigidities of the Labour party need to be eliminated if real jobs are to be created again.

Mr. Dormand: Does the Minister recall the welcome suggestion by the Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry, some time ago that companies should transfer their research and development to the regions? As exhortation has manifestly failed, will the Chancellor now introduce a financial incentive for that purpose? Such activity and employment would be valuable to the Northern region.

Mr. Rees: I would be the last to underestimate the importance of research and development. The Government would not resort to the tactics employed by the Labour Government. With regard to fiscal measures, the hon. Gentleman must await the Chancellor's Budget.

Value Added Tax

Mr. Chope: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will introduce the same scheme for value added tax payment for outside contractors for local authority school meals services as has been introduced for outside contractors for hospital meals.

Mr. Peter Rees: Local authorities can already reclaim the tax on the meals they purchase from outside contractors for supply to their pupils.

Mr. Chope: I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his reply, so far as it goes —

Mr. Dobson: Declare your interest.

Mr. Chope: Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that when the outside contractor wishes to deliver a meal direct to the pupil it is not so straightforward? Will he state what can be done about the incidence of value added tax in those circumstances? For the benefit of all hon. Members, I can say that I have no interest in this matter whatsoever, other than as a ratepayer and someone who is concerned about reducing costs.

Mr. Rees: My hon. Friend's concern for this problem inside and outside his constituency is rightly well known and applauded. He is right. If a contractor supplies meals direct to pupils, that is subject to VAT. If, however, there are any problems in my hon. Friend's constituency that he would like to draw to our attention, we shall see what proper advice can be given.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Before the Government show any generosity in this direction, will they reflect that they are forcing local authorities to increase school meal charges dramatically next April, and that they should be using any spare money to reduce the pressure on local authorities to increase the charges for school meals?

Mr. Rees: We have to be concerned with the overall level of local authority spending. It is for authorities to determine their own priorities within the parameters set by the Government.

Mr. Greenway: Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that the school meal for many children is their only substantial meal of the day and that they should be given food that has maximum calorific value? Does he further agree that the absence of VAT relief should facilitate this without making Billy Bunters of them?

Mr. Rees: I hope that the presence or absence of VAT will not make Billy Bunters of them. I note what my hon. Friend says, but I think that he slightly exaggerates the problem.

Tobacco and Alcohol

Mr. Hayes: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will revise his estimates of revenue from the specific duties on tobacco and alcohol in view of current health education campaigns.

Mr. Ian Stewart: The effects of health education campaigns on the trends of consumption are among the factors that have been taken into account in the estimates.

Mr. Hayes: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. Will he take this opportunity to repudiate the mischievous suggestions by the London stockbrokers., Buckmaster and Moore—no relation—who suggest that the revenue that will be available from tobacco and alcohol was underestimated in the Autumn Statement?

Mr. Stewart: I have seen the comments to which my hon. Friend refers. The criticism of our estimates, suggesting that they are too low, does not seem to have allowed for any fall in demand for cigarettes or beer as a


result of an increase in tax. The Exchequer would, of course, lose all the tax caused by any loss of volume and not just the incremental amount. We also allow for a switch by consumers into or out of items whose price has been changed. That, of course, alters the expected tax revenue from all other goods.

Mr. Dubs: Is it not true that during past years tobacco and alcohol have been getting cheaper in real terms? In setting the duties on those products, to what extent does the hon. Gentleman take the health hazards into account?

Mr. Stewart: During the past four years the duty on cigarettes and beer has risen respectively by 25 per cent. and 31 per cent. Obviously, the health factors are among those taken into account when we consider these matters. I draw the attentiion of the hon. Gentleman to a document produced by the Department of Health and Social Security entitled "Drinking Sensibly", which produces several arguments suggesting that tax should not be used systematically as a regulator. On the other hand, with the Christmas season approaching, I hope that the other messages about drinking sensibly will be taken seriously and that people will be conscious of the dangers of drinking and driving in the coming days.

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Will our right hon. Friend bear in mind our economic health as well as our personal health in assessing the excise duty on alcohol? Will he resist demands from Europe to raise the tax on beer and cider in line with the tax on wine? British jobs and tastes, and my constituents, demand that beer and, especially, cider are not penalised.

Mr. Stewart: I take my hon. Friend's point about the duties on beer and cider and the importance of those interests in this country. Speaking generally, we must have regard to the impact of such taxes on revenue. We know that sometimes increased duty can lead to diminishing returns.

Fiscal Restraints

Mr. Kirkwood: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has any proposals to remove existing fiscal restraints with a view to stimulating future economic growth.

Mr. Peter Rees: The Government intend to maintain the balanced fiscal, monetary and supply side policies which are already creating sustainable non-inflationary growth.

Mr. Kirkwood: Has the Minister had a chance to study the lucid and penetrating article published by his right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) on 7 December in which he argued that there should be a further relaxation of the Government's strict monetary policy and an increase in public investment, which, as a proportion of GNP, is at its lowest level since the first world war? Could the right hon. Gentleman possibly be wrong?

Mr. Rees: I noted my right hon. Friend's contribution on that subject in the papers and in our recent debate on the Autumn Statement. However, he and the hon. Gentleman overlook the fact that the resurgence of growth in this country started in 1981, so whatever view one may take of the tightness or otherwise of the Government's fiscal policy, that cannot have been a major factor.

Mr. Bottomley: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that if money supply is growing at 8 or 9 per cent. a year, the decisions taken by people in the economy will determine how much of that increase is inflation and how much is growth?

Mr. Rees: Myriad individual decisions are important in that regard, but I stress that, overall, it is the Government's dedication to the containment and reversal of inflationary pressures which has made growth possible for a number of investors and entrepreneurs in the private sector.

Mr. Nellist: Will the Minister estimate what economic growth has resulted from the fact that, since the lifting of exchange controls, so-called patriotic industrialists and financiers are sending £32 million a day out of this country for investment abroad?

Mr. Rees: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman's remarks should be directed to a wide range of investors, including the trustees of the NCB's pension fund. I stress that our overseas investments are making a massive contribution to our invisibles.

Investment

Mr. Kenneth Carlisle: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has any further evidence of a recovery in investment in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Lawson: Total investment in the first three quarters of this year is estimated to have been about 4·5 per cent. higher than in the same period last year. The December Department of Trade and Industry intentions survey points to a 7 per cent. increase in industrial investment next year, including a 9 per cent. increase in manufacturing investment.

Mr. Carlisle: That is an encouraging reply. Does my right hon. Friend agree that if that trend is to be consolidated in the new year, not only will profits have to continue to increase, but it will be essential that interest rates start to come down again?

Mr. Lawson: I share my hon. Friend's view about the importance to be attached to interest rates. That is one of the main reasons why the Government are so determined to keep public borrowing under control and to keep it falling as a proportion of GDP. One of the most encouraging aspects of this recovery, unlike previous recoveries, has been the sharp increase in company profitability.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Does not the reduced level of the United Kingdom's surplus on current account in 1983 indicate that less British capital was being exported in that year than previously?

Mr. Lawson: The right hon. Gentleman is correct. The balance of payments has to add up to zero overall. His assertion must follow as a logical necessity. However, the right hon. Gentleman will have noticed the recent sharp upward revision by the Central Statistical Office of its estimate of invisible earnings in the first nine months of this year, which makes it clear that the current account surplus this year will be significantly higher than was forecast in the Autumn Statement.

Mr. Terry Davis: If the Chancellor of the Exchequer is so certain that we are to see an economic recovery led by investment, will he tell us the industries in which that investment will take place?

Mr. Lawson: The one thing that I am certain about is that the recovery in the British economy is giving great cheer to the British people and causing great despondency among the official Opposition.

Service Contracts (Guidelines)

Mr. Neil Hamilton: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is planning to introduce new guidelines to tax offices on the procedure for classifying people as working on contracts for services or working on a contract of service.

Mr. Moore: The guidelines and advice issued to inspectors of taxes by the Board of Inland Revenue are based on criteria which the courts have independently decided are relevant for distinguishing between contracts for services and contracts of service.

Mr. Hamilton: As my hon. Friend kindly met a delegation from the Institute of Directors, including myself, last Tuesday, he will be aware that there is considerable disquiet among the self-employed and in the small business community about the Inland Revenue's policy on reclassification. Will he instruct the Inland Revenue not to seek to reclassify taxpayers out of self-employment, thus imposing the burdens of PAYE upon them, purely for reasons of the Revenue's administrative convenience? One of the best ways to counter unemployment is to encourage self-employment. Any tax policy which would counteract that trend would be counter-productive.

Mr. Moore: My hon. Friend will be aware from the meeting to which he referred that the duty of the Revenue is to interpret the law correctly. I know that he will also be delighted that the figures for self-employment for the past four and a half years show that the number of the self-employed has increased from 1·9 million to 2·3 million.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER

Newham

Mr. Tony Banks: asked the Prime Minister if she will pay an official visit to Newham.

The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): I have at present no plans to do so.

Mr. Banks: It is a pity that the Prime Minister will not be able to visit Newham, where she might see at first hand the devastating effects of her economic and social policies. There is an unmployment rate of 19 per cent. and 27,000 people are on social security. Sixty-five per cent. of tenants receive income support because of housing costs. If the Prime Minister cannot visit Newham, will she at least think, when she is eating her Christmas dinner—[HON. MEMBERS: "Spam."]—no doubt including Spam — of those in Newham who cannot afford to keep warm? Will the Prime Minister express some remorse about those people and about the 44,000 who will die of hypothermia next year?

The Prime Minister: By what he said earlier, the hon. Gentleman gave evidence that those who are in need are

provided for. The pension is higher than previously, and under the Conservative Government pensioners get a Christmas bonus, which they did not always get under Labour. There is higher spending on the National Health Service and a record amount of help with fuel for those who need it.

Mr. Kinnock: The Prime Minister constantly emphasises the value of personal thrift. We were all brought up to respect and practise prudence. If the Prime Minister, after a lifetime of economy, or as a consequence of a small occupational pension, lost between £1 and £5 a week in housing benefit, how would she feel this Christmas?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman forgets that we now spend £3,400 million on housing benefit, which is received by one household in three. Further, the Opposition never mention the million pensioners who gained £1 when housing benefit was introduced. The majority of them will not be affected by changes next April, and no one on supplementary benefit will be affected by the changes in housing benefit.

Mr. Kinnock: The Prime Minister again refuses to answer the question. Will she admit that the rise in social security expenditure is almost entirely attributable to the demographic change, as a result of which there are now more pensioners, and to the vast increase in unemployment and under-employment, which is the result of her policies? How would the right hon. Lady feel if, for no other reason than the dogma of the Government and their obedience to unreaslistic spending targets, she lost between £1 and £5 a week after scrimping and saving and showing frugality in order to provide for her old age?

The Prime Minister: Occupational pensioners will lose, especially through the taper. The amounts have been given in the reply to a question which the right hon. Gentleman has seen. Nevertheless, the taxpayers, through the Government, are giving housing benefit to one household in three. That money is not Government money. It comes from those who are already providing for their own housing costs and are also having to provide for the housing benefit of others. The right hon. Gentleman frequently asks about reductions in rates and taxation. He should accept that we need good management of resources and that we need to live within a budget.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the House that the question relates to Newham.

Mr. Spearing: Is the Prime Minister aware that, whatever happens in Calcutta, responsibility for the sick, disabled and handicapped in the London borough of Newham lies with the Newham health authority? Is she further aware that the Government are cutting the funds available to that authority by nearly £500,000 next year? How does she reconcile that with her well-advertised view to be like Mother Teresa?

The Prime Minister: I think that the hon. Gentleman does not accurately reflect the quotation, but then I do not expect him to do so. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the previous Labour Government reduced provision for the Health Service in real terms in two of the five years that they were in office. We shall not accept lectures from the Labour party on the National Health Service.

Engagements

Mr. Eggar: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 22 December.

The Prime Minister: This morning I shall preside at a meeting of the Cabinet and in addition to my duties in the House I shall be having meetings with ministerial colleagues and others.

Mr. Eggar: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the public have been immensely reassured by the increased number of police on the streets in central London in the past few days? Is she also aware that, on Tuesday, CND deliberately staged a public demonstration, thus taking many police officers away from street patrol? Could not the country and the House have expected a slightly more responsible attitude on the part of CND?

The Prime Minister: We should all like, especially at Christmas time, to put on record our thanks for the bravery and courage of the police, and especially to remember those families who will not have a loved one with them this Christmas because of the bombing last Saturday. I agree with my hon. Friend that it would have been a nice gesture if those who had planned demonstrations had cancelled them in favour of fighting terrorism and remembered that the police have an overwhelming job to do and are in the front line in that fight.

Dr. Owen: While wishing the Prime Minister a happy Christmas—

Mr. Boyes: Humbug.

Dr. Owen: —may I ask whether she is aware that 15 million people in Britain—that is the official figure—will be living at or below the poverty line this Christmas? Will she make a new year's resolution that, if the economy recovers next year, she will cut taxes by increasing child benefit? Is she further aware that if she were to concentrate a 1p reduction in the standard rate on child benefit that could increase the half-average family earnings by £3·90; that if she concentrated it on tax allowances those earnings would be increased by only 92p, and that if she concentrated it on the standard rate those earnings would be increased only by a miserable 35p?

The Prime Minister: I recognise the right hon. Gentleman's very studied question. Before I answer him, may I ask him which defnition of poverty he is using to reach that figure?

Dr. Owen: It is the official Government statistic relating to the 3 million unemployed families, the 6 million families that are living on low wages and pensioners who face high costs for rented accommodation. If the right hon. Lady checks that total she will find that 15 million Britons are at or below the poverty line.

The Prime Minister: There is no Government definition of poverty. There are some 7 million people who live in families that are supported by supplementary benefit. There are many other different definitions of poverty, which is why I asked the right hon. Gentleman to say which definition he was using. Many of the low-paid on supplementary benefit have incomes about 40 per cent. above that level. They are wholly artificial definitions. The fact remains that people who are living in need are fully and properly provided for. As to the right hon. Gentleman's question, I am not sure whether he is arguing that taxation should be increased or reduced.

Dr. Owen: Child benefit.

The Prime Minister: I am delighted to be able to tell the right hon. Gentleman that child benefit is now higher than it has ever been.

Mr. Fox: Although I want my right hon. Friend to have a relaxing holiday, will she take time during the recess to consider my Adjournment debate of this week on keeping the British £1 note? Does she agree that only as a last resort should the £1 coin be universally introduced? If the risk of forgery can be dealt with, is she aware that a plastic £1 note is acceptable?

The Prime Minister: I heard my hon. Friend on the radio during breakfast time this week. I rather share his views on the £1 coin. It is not very popular yet and I have reason to believe that the £1 note will be retained.

Mr. Tom Clarke: Will the Prime Minister find time today to attend the Adjournment debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) on shipbuilding in his constituency? If she does, will she reflect on the fact that the Minister of State's statement has caused a great deal of anxiety on Clydeside? The arrogance of its presentation has been distinctly unhelpful. Finally, will she accept responsibility as Prime Minister to intervene in this most delicate situation to save taxpayers the cost of maintaining 8,000 people on the dole who would prefer to be working for shipbuilding and their communities?

The Prime Minister: There will be no Government intervention. I share the hon. Gentleman's belief that it will be a tragedy if the workers go on strike, thereby doing themselves out of jobs. Shipbuilding orders are extremely difficult to get. There is a great deal of competition for them throughout the world, and when one has them it is a tragedy if people strike themselves out of jobs at a difficult time. I think that the Government have already shown how much they are prepared to do for shipbuilding. Since 1979 British Shipbuilders has received £850 million of taxpayers' money. Merchant shipbuilding has been subsidised by about £6,000 per job per year.

Mr. Straw: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 22 December.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Straw: Does the Prime Minister believe that it is consistent with her duty of upholding the rule of law by ensuring that the judiciary is seen clearly to be independent of the Executive that senior Government officials, at ministerial behest, should have held a clandestine meeting to seek political advice from a senior judge, whatever his previously known political affiliations before his elevation? If that is consistent with her duty, why was so much effort made to keep secret the meeting that was held between Mr. Michael Quinland and Sir John Donaldson?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman is aware that the judiciary is absolutely independent. The person who was going to be head of the Department of Employment sought the views of a judge on a certain matter. It is not a bad idea to know how legislation works out if one is thinking again of legislating. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that every meeting that is held under the auspices of a Department has to be public? If he is, he is bonkers.

Mrs. Rumbold: At this Christmas time will my right hon. Friend join me in expressing sympathy to two of my constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Proctor, whose son Timothy was killed in a road accident last year? Does she agree that the House should think about introducing legislation for minimum sentencing when death results from such accidents so that the general public may know that their elected representatives in this place value human life?

The Prime Minister: I join my hon. Friend in expressing sympathy for her constituents and all others who have suffered similarly. It is very rare for us to have minimum sentences. If such sentences were to be introduced, there would have to be loopholes for the exceptional case. I think that we are making it clear that we believe in strong sentencing for offences that justify it. As my hon. Friend knows, we shall introduce legislation, which we hope will go through the House, which will enable certain sentences, if they are felt to be insufficient, to be referred to the Court of Appeal for that court to pronounce upon them. That would be guidance in future.

Mr. Craigen: In view of the Prime Minister's earlier reply, will she find time today to make a new year resolution to start doing things for Scotland? Will she get her Ministers to knock heads together over the Scott Lithgow yard. instead of wringing their hands in indifference?

The Prime Minister: In answer to the hon. Gentleman's question about Scott Lithgow, I gave the annual subsidy that has gone from the taxpayer to

merchant shipbuilding. If one translates that to the Scott Lithgow yards, it is equal not to £6,000 per year per employee, but to £13,000.

Billericay

Mr. Proctor: asked the Prime Minister if she will pay an official visit to Billericay.

The Prime Minister: I have at present no plans to do so

Mr. Proctor: Is my right hon. Friend aware that she would receive a festive and warm welcome in Billericay from my ratepayers, if not my rate spenders? Is she further aware that 60 per cent. of rates come from non-domestic ratepayers who have no direct influence on local elections, and that only 35 per cent. of people eligible to vote in local elections actually pay full rates? In the light of that, does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government have an ultimate responsibility to protect business, commerce and householders from excessive rate burdens imposed by wildly extravagant local councils such as the Socialist Basildon district council?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is right in his conclusion that only a minority of the electorate pay rates. That is one of the very worrying aspects of that system. My hon. Friend is also right in thinking that many industrial and commercial enterprises are not represented in any way on the voting registers of those authorities to which they pay rates. I wholeheartedly agree that the Bill to cap rates is overwhelmingly popular among ratepayers.

Business of the House

Mr. Neil Kinnock: (Islwyn): Will the Leader of the House make a statement about what will be the business of the House in a month's time or so?

The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): Yes, Sir. The business for the first week after the Christmas adjournment will be as follows:
MONDAY 16 JANUARY —Second Reading of the Ordnance Factories and Military Services Bill.
Motion on the Urban Development Corporations (Financial Limits) Order.
TUESDAY 17 JANUARY—Second Reading of the Rates Bill
Motion on the New Towns (Limit on Borrowing) Order.
WEDNESDAY 18 JANUARY—Remaining stages of the Tenants' Rights Etc. (Scotland) Amendment Bill.
Motion on the undertaking relating to the North of Scotland Orkney and Shetland Shipping Company Limited and the Peninsular and Oriental Navigation Company.
THURSDAY 19 JANUARY—Opposition Day (5th Allotted Day). The topic for debate to be announced later.
It is expected that the Chairman of Ways and Means will name opposed private business for consideration at seven o'clock.
Motion on the District Electoral Areas Commissioner (Northern Ireland) Order.
FRIDAY 20 JANUARY—Private Members' motions.

Mr. Kinnock: On the business for Monday 16 January, the Opposition will want to examine the way in which the Ordnance Factories and Military Services Bill puts private profits before the nation's defence interests. We shall table a reasoned amendment to that effect.
The right hon. Gentleman will also understand that the Opposition—on both sides of the House—will resist the Second Reading of the Rates Bill on Tuesday 17 January, because it would make major constitutional changes by centrally dictating the rates and budgets of every local authority and, as a result, will undermine a long history of local democracy which the House should defend.
May I also give the right hon. Gentleman notice that the subject for the Opposition day on 19 January will be announced through the usual channels and offer him my usual felicitations for the festive season?

Mr. Biffen: Of course, I accept and reciprocate the festive wishes and am most glad to know that the usual channels will be used to inform us all of the subject for debate on the Opposition day. I hope that that augurs well for a constructive framework within which powerful dissent can continue next year. In that context, I note that there will be a Division on the Ordnance Factories and Military Services Bill; and am grateful for the prior warning that a modicum of controversy will be attached to the Rates Bill.

Mr. Geoffrey Rippon: (Hexham): In view of the Prime Minister's reply at Question Time on the subject of rates, will my right hon. Friend consider withdrawing the Second Reading of the Rates Bill and having instead a debate on the Government's proposals for reforming the rating system? Is it because the Government are ashamed of the Rates Bill that they published it just before
Christmas and we are to debate it immediately after Christmas? It is a deplorable Bill which raises major constitutional issues. It is a classic example of elective dictatorship. Will my right hon. Friend at least give an assurance that, because of its constitutional importance, the Committee stage will be taken on the Floor of the House?

Mr. Biffen: My right hon. and learned Friend is a Privy Councillor and therefore has a reasonable expectation of being called in the debate on Tuesday 17 January. I cannot understand why he should want to make a preliminary speech now.

Hon. Members: Answer the question.

Mr. David Steel: Perhaps the question asked by the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon) will be answered when the Leader of the House replies to my question. May I invite the right hon. Gentleman to cast his mind back to 1978, before he fell from grace, and to recall that he voted with the Liberal party against the order introduced by Mr. Tony Benn, as he then was, for the expansion of the Windscale nuclear processing plant? Given the right hon. Gentleman's good record on that issue, will he listen sympathetically to the demand in all parts of the House for a debate on that important issue, as the processing and storing of nuclear waste casts doubt on the Government's nuclear power programme?

Mr. Biffen: The point about Mr. Benn's order was referred to in the comments following the statement made yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. Of course, I take note of what the right hon. Gentleman has said. I think that on that occasion I was in the company of many other people. We shall have either to re-examine or rewrite history. However, as was stated yesterday, this is a most serious situation, and my right hon. Friend will be making a further statement to the House as and when it is judged necessary. Of course, we shall consider what other parliamentary occasions will be necessary.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: When that important legislation on rates is debated on Tuesday 17 January, will the Government make it clear whether they are prepared to allow the appalling anomaly to continue whereby agriculture does not contribute to rates at all?

Mr. Biffen: Of course, I shall refer that request to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, who will be in charge of the legislation, but I have an instinct that he has quite enough trouble already.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: With reference to the business for Thursday, will the right hon. Gentleman draw the attention of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to early-day motion 378?
[That this House, having considered the Third Schedule to the draft of the District Electoral Areas Commission (Northern Ireland) Order 1983 believes that it is expedient for the Commissioner to be empowered to recommend electoral areas consisting of less than five wards where such recommendation would avoid an area being divided between two parliamentary constituencies or would otherwise be convenient; and invites the Government to amend the draft accordingly.]
Will the Leader of the House invite the Secretary of State to consider that point in good time in case it should be thought desirable that the terms of the order should be modified?

Mr. Biffen: I have acquainted myself with the terms of that early-day motion, and I shall of course carry out the right hon. Gentleman's request.

Mr. Harry Greenway: Will the Leader of the House ensure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment refers to the suggestion that the GLC is spending between £2 million and £5 million of ratepayers' money on a strong political campaign to save itself, which contrasts with the fact that only four people in the Department of the Environment, costing about £50,000 per annum, are getting together legislation for the abolition of the GLC, for which the country and the whole of London voted substantially?

Mr. Biffen: My hon. Friend has made a fair point which could have been made on Tuesday 17 January. However, he has chosen to make it now, and I think that he has much support in the House.

Mr. James Lamond: In view of the tremendous interest shown this morning, especially in the Chamber, in the broadcast of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) in which he simultaneously demolished the Chancellor's financial policy and raised the blood pressure of almost every Tory Member, will the Leader of the House make arrangements for a transcript of that broadcast to be placed in the Library, possibly with a supportive letter from the CBI which strongly supported my right hon. Friend?

Mr. Biffen: I have known the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) for many years and mercifully he is free of the vice of modesty. If his remarks on the "Today" programme had the consequences to which the hon. Gentleman refers, I think the right hon. Gentleman is perfectly well able to make the arrangements with the Library himself.

Sir Dudley Smith: (Warwick and Leamington): In view of the growing importance of tourism as one of Britain's key industries, will my right hon. Friend consider in the new year giving time for a major debate on tourism, particularly as a report on tourism was published recently by the Department of Trade and Industry?

Mr. Biffen: I at once endorse my hon. Friend's substantive point. I shall refer his request to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

Mr. Alfred Morris: (Manchester, Wythenshawe): Will the Leader of the House now reply to the precise and important question put to him by the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon)?

Mr. Biffen: I am not going to reply to what are speeches which otherwise — [Interruption.] It was a series of propositions—not a request—about the content of Government business except in one respect, that the Committee stage be taken on the Floor of the House. That, of course, is in the gift of the House when it has the opportunity to vote on it after Second Reading.

Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark: (Birmingham, Selly Oak): Surely the Rates Bill is a constitutional Bill.
Although the Government say that we are a unitary country, if we are to change local government to be nm and selected by civil servants with the Government being the majority vote on every council in the land and if that is not a consititutional issue, when will there ever be a constitutional issue? Is it not time for the Government, instead of trying to hurry through this squalid little Bill, for once to give absolute rights for the House to discuss a constitutional issue? The Bill should be dealt with in a full Committee of the House.

Mr. Biffen: The decision on whether it should be considered in Committee on the Floor of the House or upstairs will be voted on the day after we return from the recess. I have been around long enough to recollect local government reorganisation Bills being dealt with in Committee upstairs. There is nothing extraordinary about the proposition that the Rates Bill might be so dealt with.

Mr. Don Dixon: Is the Leader of the House aware that before Parliament reassembles on 16 January a very damaging strike will take place in the shipbuilding industry on 6 January? The unions have indicated that they are prepared to postpone the strike while further negotiations take place but the employers have said that the strike must be called off. The strike was called after a ballot of the members. Will the Leader of the House have a word with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and ask him to use his good offices to fetch both sides together arid thus avoid this damaging dispute?

Mr. Biffen: The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point about the potential seriousness of this situation. I cannot answer for the policy judgments that will be made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry but I will most certainly refer the hon. Gentleman's request to my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Robert Adley: Did my right hon. Friend see the recent World in Action programme wherein the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Adams) was alleged to have engaged in conspiracy to bomb, to commit grievous bodily harm and to attempt to assassinate people? As we can raise nothing in the House until 16 January when the House returns, will my right hon. Friend please join me in asking my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General immediately to refer this matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions lest anyone think that Members of this House, even though they have not taken the oath, are not subject to the law of this land?

Mr. Biffen: I did not see the television programme to which my hon. Friend referred, but I will of course refer his anxiety to my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General.

Mr. Roland Boyes: (Houghton and Washington): Is the Leader of the House aware that a pit in my constituency is being closed and that I should like this important issue to be debated in the House as soon as possible? Up to now men under 50 have been transferred to other pits and guaranteed other jobs in the industry, but the National Coal Board has announced that men under 50 at the Herrington pit in my region will not be transferred to other pits. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that that will mean compulsory redundancy for 500 men in a region that has the highest unemployment and in a borough council area
that has unemployment running at one in four? Does he agree that the situation should be debated as a matter of urgency?

Mr. Biffen: I accept at once that that is an important constituency matter for the hon. Gentleman. An Adjournment debate might be the most appropriate way of raising it. I shall refer his remarks to the Secretary of State for Energy.

Mr. David Harris: Between now and the Second Reading of the Rates Bill, will my right hon. Friend and his colleagues give consideration to possible amendments? That would hold out at least the hope of some relief for hard-pressed ratepayers, those on small incomes and business men in those areas which are not ruled by big spending authorities but which are within the areas of local authorities that are prudent and try to do their utmost, to contain rates, such as those in Cornwall.

Mr. Biffen: I do not wish to be drawn into the merits of the legislation, but I assure my hon. Friend that the objectives that he has at heart are shared by the Secretary of State for the Environment, who will wish to take account of the point that he raises.

Mr. David Winnick: Does the Leader of the House recognise the need for an early debate when we come back on political developments in Northern Ireland, all the more so if it is true that the Cabinet will today be considering the position? Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that the new Ireland forum will probably be reporting early in the new year and that that is all the more reason why we should have a wide-ranging debate? If such a debate takes place, will it be possible for it to be extended beyond 10 o'clock?

Mr. Biffen: I shall bear in mind the hon. Gentleman's request. Obviously I cannot give a categoric answer or hold out much hope to him, but the point he makes is a real one.

Mr. Richard Tracey: In view of the reported intention of the leader of the Greater London council to ban some sportsmen and stars from performing simply because of where they might have performed before, will my right hon. Friend take note of the fact that many of my constituents would wish that on 17 January we should debate not only the rate-capping legislation but also the abolition of the GLC, the leader of which now seems to be acting in the best traditions of Orwell's "1984"? Is it not time that big brother was switched off?

Mr. Biffen: The House is clearly showing its desire this morning to have a lively trailer for the debate that is planned for Tuesday 17 January. I note what my hon. Friend says — I have considerable sympathy with his propositions—but I do not think that I can add to what I have said.

Mr. Alfred Dubs: Does the Leader of the House agree that he will have quite a job getting the Rates Bill through this House? Does he further agree that he is likely to have at least as great difficulty getting the legislation through the other place? Will he therefore confirm that there is no intention on the part of the Government to have the Rates Bill deemed a financial
measure so that debate in the other place is severely truncated with the possibility of amendments there being limited?

Mr. Biffen: As for the ease and speed with which that legislation will be secured, in politics it is always wise to travel hopefully. I think that the hon. Gentleman will find unfounded the deeper anxieties that he expresses.

Mr. Peter Viggers: May I remind my right hon. Friend that time was found in recent weeks for debates on the Royal Navy and the Army? Will time be found early in the new year for a debate on the Royal Air Force?

Mr. Biffen: I hope that that will be possible. I am sorry that it could not have been included in the first week after the recess.

Mr. Dave Nellist: Will the Leader of the House consider providing time in January for a major debate on low pay, given two events during the past week? First, on Monday, the "Panorama" programme pointed out that, of 23,000 work places visited last year to investigate low pay, 9,000 were found illegally to be underpaying people, although only seven were prosecuted. Secondly, on Tuesday, the Department of Employment published a report that purported to show that youth wages were the cause of youth unemployment. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware, however, that the Department has shown in written answers to me that youth wages have fallen by 8 per cent. for boys and 12 per cent. for girls since the Conservatives came to office and yet during that time youth unemployment has trebled?

r. Biffen: I shall bear in mind the request for a debate on that topic, but it must take its place among all the other demands on Government time. If I am unsuccessful in satisfying the hon. Gentleman's request, at least he will have had the satisfaction of making now in minuscule form the speech that he would have made on the subject.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: When we debate rates on 17 January, will my right hon. Friend do his best to assure those hon. Members who, like me, represent ratepayers who during the past four years have never seen rate increases of less than 25 per cent. and who have seen rate increases of up to 50 per cent. get as much chance to speak as those who wish to put contrary views on the legislation?

Mr. Biffen: That is clearly a matter for Mr. Speaker and mercifully not for me.

Mr. John Ryman: Will the Leader of the House consider having a debate on the Government's new regional policy soon after the recess? Is he aware that, because of the asinine proposals recently announced by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, there is widespread anxiety in the north-east on the consequential job losses in an area of high unemployment? Is he aware that the abolition of special development area status for manufacturing industry in the north-east would have disastrous effects? Will he treat this matter as one of urgency?

Mr. Biffen: The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that there was protracted questioning after the statement on regional policy, but I shall bear in mind the hon. Gentlemman's request that that should be buttressed by a


debate in the new year. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that there are many demands on Government time and, inevitably, there must be some type of rationing.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. As it is Christmas, I shall call the hon. Members who have been standing, but I ask for brief questions as important private members' time is to follow.

Mr. Simon Hughes: As a final helpful suggestion to the Leader of the House on how to expedite the business of rates, will he consider following the example of Southwark borough council? Last week, having fixed the council agenda the majority party decided to boycott the meeting. If the Government follow that proposal, the rates matter will be finished quickly and with the least pain on both sides of the House.

Mr. Biffen: I believe that that was meant to be reflected more on the hon. Gentleman's constituency than on me, but I am sure that he has made a valuable point.

Mr. Roger Sims: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many Conservative Members warmly welcome the Rates Bill and commend the fact that he is bringing it forward so quickly? Will he be assured that he will have a great deal of support from Conservative Members as well as the Opposition?

Mr. Biffen: I note with much gratitude my hon. Friend's comments. Above all, I shall ensure that they are passed on to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment.

Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: Will the Leader of the House consider during the recess the serious situation in Grenada and make time available in the new year for a debate? About 37 people are being held in Richmond Hill prison, and many of them are denied access to lawyers. American and Caribbean military police are touring the island and are regularly picking up members of the former New Jewel Movement Government. Does he consider that, as legislation on the Government of Grenada was passed by the House those circumstances in a Commonwealth country deserve consideration and merits a full debate in the House?

Mr. Biffen: The hon. Gentleman identifies a matter that gives rise to worry and debate. It is pre-eminently one where a private Member might use the initiatives that are provided by private Members' time to see that the matter comes before the House.

Mr. Tony Banks: Merry Christmas to you, Mr. Speaker. Is the Leader of the House aware that on Tuesday the device of a planted written question was used to make an important announcement on the Arts Council's budget for next year and that, before the House knew the terms of that settlement, a press conference was given to which two hon. Members were denied access? Will he encourage Ministers in matters of great concern to the House to make statements from the Dispatch Box and not use planted questions?

Mr. Biffen: As a practising Philistine, I am perhaps not the best person to answer those delicate questions. The hon. Gentleman raises an issue that arouses passions in connection with the making of statements. I shall draw the attention of my right hon. and noble Friend to the incident to which the hon. Gentleman takes exception.

House of Commons (Services)

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That paragraph (12) of Sanding Order No. 103 (Select Committee on House of Commons (Services)) shall have effect for the remainder of the present session of Parliament as if the words 'within the United Kingdom' in line 54 were omitted.
—[Mr. Biffen.]

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: I do not wish to stand in the way of hon. Members wishing to speak on the Adjournment, but I am sorry that the Leader of the House has not offered to give the reasons behind a change of considerable importance in the Standing Order.
No doubt there are precedents for Select Committees taking evidence outside the realm. I believe that for the most part they have been restricted to British installations or other interests located outside the kingdom, although there may be other precedents going wider than that. Nevertheless, I submit that, prima facie, the taking of evidence outside the jurisdiction by Select Committees of this House always requires justification. It is a quality of the Select Committees of this House that the House has armed them with powers to enable them to carry out their duty to the House, but those powers can be exercised only within the jurisdiction. Prima facie, therefore, it is undesirable—unless it is absolutely essential that they should take evidence outside the realm.
A further consideration is that we should certainly never wish a Committee of the House seeking to take evidence on our behalf to encounter any obstruction or refusal to answer questions. If Select Committees are sent into foreign parts to take evidence, there is no way in which we can preserve the expression of our sovereignty that they should embody.
I hope that the Leader of the House will therefore oblige us with a brief outline of the imperative grounds on which the amendment to the Standing Order is based.

The Lord Privy Seal arid Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): Perhaps I may respond to the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) with a brief explanation of the decision that gave rise to this request to the House.
The Computer Sub-Committee of the Services Committee feels that it would be useful, in discharging its tasks, to have the opportunity to examine the use of computers by legislative assemblies in other countries. With this in mind, it intends to pay a brief visit to North America early in the new year. The motion before the House would allow it to do so.
I believe that it is appropriate for the Sub-Committee to be able to inform itself in that way and the Services Committee has given its approval. I therefore commend the motion to the House.

Mr. John Mc William: As Chairman of the Computer Sub-Committee of the Services Committee, I plead guilty in face of the admonition from the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell). We wish specifically to visit Washington and Ottawa, for two reasons.
First, experience in the United States has shown that the cost to the United States Government of the infonnation technology provisions for members of its legislative assembly is greater than the entire cost of providing for the Palace of Westminster, all its staff and all its Members.
That example needs to be examined to discover what the Americans did wrong. I am confident that we shall have no difficulty in obtaining the information that we seek.
Secondly, we wish to visit Ottawa to study specific measures that have been taken in the provision of information technology in linking building within a 10 km radius and providing enhanced information technology facilities for members of the legislative assembly there.
The Sub-Committee is engaged in preparing a report for the House on the information technology needs of Members, probably the last that we shall undertake for the next 20 years. It will have to be made for that period and, therefore, will have to be as well-researched as possible. The Economist intelligence unit information technology system, Informatics, which did the original study funded by the Department of Industry did not have any evidence from other Administrations, which is why we wish to make the trip.
I think the House will agree that the order is limited to this session.

Mr. K. Harvey Proctor: I do not wish to delay the House in moving to important private Members' business, but may I ask my right hon. Friend to answer a number of questions which immediately occur to me? What is the cost to public funds of this visit to the United States of America? How many people are going? What positions will they hold? What attempts have been made to obtain the information, that people believe might be obtained personally in the United States of America, by other means—letter, telephone or through our embassy officials, for whom we pay substantial sums of money, presumably to obtain such information from other countries? It is outrageous that we should have this proposition put before us just before Christmas. The importance of the subject was not fully known throughout the House before the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) raised the matter, otherwise it might have gone through rapidly on the nod. I am sure that the House is indebted to the right hon. Gentleman that it did not. I should be grateful if my right hon. Friend, with the festivities almost upon us, would give some meaningful answers.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: I do not wish to delay the House more than a moment or two, but we rarely have a chance to discuss this important subject. Two or three years ago my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) wished to put through a motion that created the information technology, which is now of great use to hon. Members. He wished to do so without debate. There were objections at the appropriate time for a number of months before we had a debate. During the course of that debate I pointed out that the extensive machinery which was about to be installed, and which is now so useful, was outside the control of the House in that the House was electronically linked with an establishment in Milton Keynes on which we rely for a great deal of our indexation. At the time I asked that we should retain at least one set of the older technology manual typewritten indices. The Services Committee did not see fit to agree to my request for that insurance. The result is that some of the most useful visual indices, which do not rely on electronics, have disappeared from the Library. I regret that, and believe that the policy was wrong.
If the House agrees to send hon. Members of the Services Committee to Washington to see what went wrong there, I hope that the cost of reinstalling and maintaining such simple facilities that we have had in the House for many years, and which have been discontinued, will be re-examined.

Mr. Tony Banks: Mr. Speaker, is there any provision within the rules of the House for these proposals to be withdrawn from the Order Paper so that we may have a fuller discussion of a subject that clearly causes anxiety to both sides of the House? In local Government, the trip would be described as a junket, although I am sure that it is not. There would be headlines in newspapers asking how much it would cost ratepayers. That is a legitimate question. We need to know how much the trip will cost the taxpayer. I believe that this motion should be withdrawn from the Order Paper.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As this is the last day before the recess, will the Leader of the House withdraw this motion so that it can be further considered?

Mr. Biffen: The work of the Computer Sub-Committee is of great significance to the House. I should not wish its work to proceed amid any misunderstanding or resentment. I believe that the questions that have been fairly put require better answers than I can give. I shall be perfectly candid about that. Therefore, I believe that much the most sensible way to proceed is to withdraw the motion and table it when the House resumes.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMISSION

Ordered,
That Mr. Roy Beggs, Sir William Clark, Mr. Edward du Cann, Mr. W. W. Hamilton, Mr. Terence L. Higgins, Mr. Peter Hordern, and Mr. David Young be members of the Public Accounts Commission.—[Mr. Cope.]

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Sainsbury.]

Mr. Speaker: Because of what happened a few minutes ago, when the hon. Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) was in the Chamber, his debate will end at 11.30 am.

Mr. Harry Greenway: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I gave notice that I wished briefly to present a petition. Is it in order that I do that?

Mr. Speaker: I must tell the hon. Member that I regret to say that I have not had that notice. If the fault is in my Office, I can only apologise to him. I shall look into the matter.

Mr. Greenway: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I apologise to the hon. Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile), but I have been in my place since before 9.30 am. I gave proper notice to the Table Office last night. I should like my constituents to know that I in no way let them down on what is an important matter to them. I shall await your counsel.

Mr. Speaker: If the hon. Member gave proper notice, of his petition, I shall have to take the petition now, but it will take time out of the debate of the hon. Member for Montgomery.

PETITION

Contraception (Under-age Girls)

Mr. Harry Greenway: With your permission Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I beg leave to present a petition drawing attention to the justified opposition, which I share, to the revised Health Service notice (section G), issued by the Department of Health and Social Security in 1980
which advises doctors that they may provide contraceptive drugs or devices to girls under the age of consent without their parents being consulted.
The petition is in the name of Captain H. Ross Cordy, of the Salvation Army of I Betham road, Greenford, Middlesex with about 300 signatures. It is supported by another petition in the name of Mr. Clive Bishop of Greenford and some 500 fellow constituents from Perivale, many of whom attend St. John Fisher church in Perivale. Some 600 petitions on this important subject have to date been presented to the House bearing millions of signatures on an issue about which the country feels strongly. I look for early action.

To lie upon the Table.

Mr. Speaker: I say to the hon. Member for Montgomery, that in view of the petition, his debate will end at 11.35 am and to the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) that his debate will also have 25 minutes. That should bring us back on course.

Clatter County Primary School, Powys

Mr. Alex Carlile: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the subject of the closing of Clatter county primary school, Powys. I look upon this opportunity as something of a Christmas present, although I began to wonder whether I would get the wrapping off this morning. The closure was proposed by the local education authority, the Powys county council, and approved on 7 July this year by the Secretary of State for Wales.
Clatter is a small village situated between two larger villages. To the one side is Carno—the headquarters of the celebrated Laura Ashley company—and to the other is Caersws. Each of those villages has a school. The Carno school is to continue unchanged, but, more to the point, Caersws is to have a new purpose-built school as a so-called area school.
Montgomery district, which we prefer to call Montgomeryshire, has a total population not much in excess of 45,000. It is possible to travel from the Shropshire border on the east to the Dyfi estuary on the west, a distance of over 40 miles, without leaving Montgomeryshire. It is also a great distance from north to south. I make those points to emphasise the sparsity of the district.
That sparsity is made worse by terrible public transport. Even in the heyday of stage carriage services on the buses, travel about Montgomeryshire was not easy. As a result of the sparsity, which has largely been ignored by the present Government, the provision of primary schools has evolved into a form that took that sparsity into account in a practical manner.
The village schools grew up and were well supported in general by the old Montgomeryshire county council, which was certainly philosophically committed to the concept of village schools. The size of the village schools varies from the larger schools with well over 50 pupils to the smallest with only a handful of pupils. Those schools should be considered in the whole Welsh context. En January 1983 there were 339 primary schools in Wales with fewer than 50 pupils. Clatter primary school falls between the two extremes. There are now 24 pupils on its roll. It is of average size by the standards of Montgomeryshire village schools. There are about 40 other schools in Powys with between 20 and 40 pupils. The school has two full-time teachers, and ancillary staff in proportion to its size.
There are three fundamental reasons why village schools deserve to be retained. They give a high standard of education compared with larger schools. They offer young children an emphasis on personal attention, and a family atmosphere, as well as close attention to their eductional and social needs.
Secondly, they are economical. Transport and capital costs are kept to a minimum. Clatter village school is a good example of a well maintained old building that could serve for many years as a school. The economical nature of the service is especially evident when set against the enormous capital costs of building new schools.
Thirdly, village schools provide a focus for community life. The school is the centre point of a village, especially


in a village such as Clatter which lacks any other permanent fully-staffed facility, such as a church, or a pub for that matter.
However, despite my entreaties and those of many others, neither Powys county council nor the Secretary of State for Wales has been prepared to accept the fact that a village school holds a special place in a small community. If the Minister of State cannot show us today that he accepts that view, our worst fears will have been well founded and the village schools will become yet another example of the Government's obsession with centralisation.
When the closure was first mooted by Powys county council—and it is interesting to note that a previous similar decision had been made by the old Montgomeryshire county council, but rescinded — the justification was that the roll of Clatter school would fall below 20 pupils. It was predicted that by January 1985 the roll would be at the very low level of 17 pupils. The effect of a closure proposal—let alone an approved closure—can be imagined. Closure blight sets in. There is clear evidence that potential Clatter pupils have been sent by their parents to Caersws school. I have evidence of five such cases. The school has also lost out on the acquisition of out-of-zone children on the basis of parental choice, although it is a very good school. Nevertheless, it has remained a hub of lively activity in the two languages of the area.
The present school roll, taken together with the clear intention of local parents, gives proof positive that the local education authority's estimate of the school roll is too low by 20 per cent. for January 1984, and by more than that for January 1985. It is plain that the prospect of a blight-free Clatter school roll falling below 20 in the foreseeable future was very small. In estimating the future school roll figures, the local education authority failed to have regard to two important factors. First was the number of old properties which are being renovated. The authority looked only at the number of new planning consents. Secondly, it failed to take account of the number of young couples living within or on the borders of the catchment area.
Another argument put forward by the local education authority was that the increased numbers at the new Caersws school would enable a broader and better education to be given at that school. That sticks in the throats of Clatter parents. There is no demand by them for any better education, and it is hard to imagine that their children could receive a better primary education.
The known quality of Clatter is being set by the local education authority against the unknown quantity of a new Caersws school in a very unfair way. The educational arguments are founded on the Gittins report, which was based on evidence taken in the early 1960s. The report is out of date, particularly as the qualifications, the choice, and the in-service training of teachers are much greater than they were 20 years ago. I suspect that Powys county council—and certainly the director of education of that county council — would now accept that the Gittins report is indeed well out of date. The new school would have to be very remarkable to be better than Clatter.
A third argument for closure is the economic one. A glib economic case was placed before the Secretary of State. It looked convincing enough until one started to

examine the figures. However, it was inaccurate in detail and — more vitally — it failed to take account of the capital costs of the extra provision at Caersws school for the Clatter pupils, and the secondary cost of that capital. It also failed to take account of the high-expenditure that will be necessary if Clatter school is closed, for extra school transport.
One cannot kid the people of Montgomeryshire by presenting them with accounts based only on current expenditure. Our farmers can do their sums very quickly, and I have learnt from them. To overlook capital expenditure is simply unrealistic and unconvincing. The Secretary of State has reached his decision on the basis of incorrect figures and on an education argument founded on out-of-date theoretical wisdom without regard to local evidence. The decision was wrong, and the parents are right in refusing to accept it and in demonstrating against it.
There was a one-day strike recently at Clatter school. One could not say that it had 100 per cent. support; but the only child who went to school was the child of the head teacher, who did not have much choice in the matter. Furthermore, at various meetings of the schools subcommittee of the Powys county council, some county councillors have expressed a clear desire for the decision to be reviewed. Discussion has been stifled from the chair, no doubt on the basis of advice received in good faith.
The county council says, "The Welsh Office has approved the closure and that's that." But when I write to the Welsh Office, the Minister of State tells me, "It's a matter for the Powys county council." The buck is being passed from one to the other, and the children of Clatter will suffer as a result. There will be no going back. If the school is closed, we all know that it will be closed for ever.
Following a recent television interview on the subject, which I had the good fortune to be offered, many of my constituents have written to me and sent messages about the Clatter closure and the general subject of village schools. Only one person living in Montgomeryshire has declared his opposition to my views.
Fact has been made the poor relation of opinion. Accuracy has been murdered by miscalculation. There has been a poverty of research which has produced the wrong answer. We in Montgomeryshire believe that the people of Clatter are being used—and ill-used—to justify a decision already taken about the size of the new school at Caersws.
I am grateful for this opportunity to raise the matter in the House. I appeal to the Minister of State to use his good offices and influence to persuade the county council to rescind its decision.

The Minister of State, Welsh Office (Mr. John Stradling Thomas): I listened with great interest to the hon. Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile). I know that this is a case in which he has taken a close interest since he became a Member of the House, and he has written to me about a number of aspects of it. I pay tribute to the vigorous way in which he has supported the views of those who made representations to him and to the cogent manner in which he argued his case this morning. In reply I should like to cover three broad issues in the short time available to me—first, the general backcloth against which any debate about school closures should take place; second,


the differing statutory responsibilities of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and local education authorities; and third, the particular case of Clatter.
Proposals to close schools, particularly small rural primary schools, must not be viewed as a recent innovation. There is no general policy on school closures. Such schools have been closing for many years. The hon. Gentleman referred to some statistics. Indeed, the Central Advisory Committee for Education (Wales) commented in 1967, in its report on primary education in Wales, that over 180 schools in rural areas closed between 1949 and 1965 and that in the preceding decade such schools had been closing at the rate of about 10 a year. Of course, great care is necessary in handling raw statistics of school closure proposals since on occasions there can be proposals that do not necessarily involve premises being taken out of use—for example an amalgamation of an infants' school and a junior school under one head teacher —but it seems to be the case that, allowing for such factors, the closure rate over the past four years remains around 10 a year.
It is of course true that the number of pupils to be provided for has, for demographic reasons, been falling significantly in the primary sector for a number of years. That was a major factor in the decision in July 1981 to issue Welsh Office circular 30/81. The circular drew attention to the educational and financial advantages of taking out of use school places that had become surplus to requirements.
I have already said that the closure of small primary schools in rural areas is not a recent phenomenon. I should also say that neither are the views set out in circular 30/81, which were in part a restatement of the message set out in Welsh Office circular 39/78. To put it another way, the educational and financial implications of falling numbers of pupils have received attention from successive Governments for some years. By 1981 the problems had become acute, and the 1981 circular reflected the case for urgent action. There are those who argue that it is an oversimplification to assume that it is practicable to take all surplus places out of use. I agree. That is self-evident, but that was not what we were urging. Our aim was that about two fifths of the number of surplus places should be taken out of use over a five-year period. We believe that to be a realistic and prudent response to the problem.
I referred to the educational arguments in favour of taking surplus places out of use that were outlined in the 1981 circular. In particular, the circular drew attention to the educational benefits that can accrue from the elimination of mixed age classes in the primary sector. It is frequently the case that one school with about 100 pupils will have more to offer than a collection of schools with 20 or 30 pupils each. Scale may produce not only financial economies but, more importantly, educational benefits both in terms of the avoidance of mixed age classes—to which I referred — and in terms of the breadth of experience and skill that a larger teaching force may possess in subjects such as science, history and geography. There may also be social as well as educational benefits available as a result of pupils being able to mix with larger groups of children their own age.
I must now refer to the division of responsibility to which the hon. Gentleman referred, between local education authorities and the Secretary of State in relation to this issue. The statutory duty for the provision of schools suitable for affording education for pupils of

different ages, abilities and aptitudes rests with local education authorities. My right hon. Friend's powers are strictly limited. Indeed, with regard to proposals to close schools, the respective responsibilities of local education authorities and my right hon. Friend were debated fully in the House only three years ago, and are now set out in section 12 of the Education Act 1980.

Mr. Alex Carlile: is the Minister effectively saying that if a local education authority provides the Secretary of State with inaccurate information, and the proposal to close a school is approved on the basis of that inaccurate information, no remedy is available to the Secretary of State when the inaccuracies are discovered?

Mr. Stradling Thomas: I am not saying that. I shall come to that matter later.
The law provides that where a local education authority proposes to close a school it must publish a statutory notice outlining its proposals. If the school concerned is a voluntary school or if objections are made in accordance with the terms of the 1980 Act, the proposals require the approval of my right hon. Friend. Otherwise, the proposal is entirely for determination by the local education authority. For the sake of completeness, I should add that it is open to my right hon. Friend to call in a proposal for his approval, but I shall not dwell on that matter as it has no relevance in the context of today's debate.
It is time now to refer to the proposal that led to this debate—the proposed closure of Clatter county primary school. As the hon. Gentleman said, Clatter is located about three miles from Caersws in the county of Powys. On 25 October 1982 the Powys county council—the local education authority—published a proposal to close Clatter county primary school and to transfer the pupils, subject to the expression of parental preference, to a new school to be built at Caersws. The authority's intention was to implement the proposal in July 1985 as the planned completion date for the new school at Caersws was September 1985. Objections to the published proposals were received from parents and from the governors of Clatter school, and thus the matter came before my right hon. Friend as provided for in section 12(5) of the 1980 Act.
After careful consideration—I shall say something further about this later—my right hon. Friend decided that he should approve the proposals of the local education authority, and, as the hon. Gentleman said, his decision was conveyed to the local education authority and the objectors on 7 July 1983.
The new school at Caersws is to be built to replace outdated premises—although they are well maintained, as the hon. Gentleman said—currently in use and will provide for about 120 pupils. That contrasts sharply with the situation at Clatter, where the number of pupils on roll declined from 35 in 1980 to around 25 in 1983. Those pupils span the age range four to 11 years, so that with two teachers the age range for each class is very wide. At the new school it should be possible to avoid mixed age classes as well as to make specialist provision for pupils of nursery age and remedial pupils.
Proposals for the closure of schools, particularly those that are the only ones existing in small communities, often arouse opposition. This proposal was no exception. Of course, we all recognise the contribution that village schools have made to their communities and the local


support that they have usually generated. Also, the disadvantages of small schools, which I have already referred to, must not automatically be assumed to apply in each case. In considering proposals that come before him, my right hon. Friend treats each case on its merits and must be satisfied that in each case the proposal will be in the educational interests of the pupils directly concerned. I cannot emphasise that point too strongly.
It is easy to envisage circumstances in which a redeployment of resources arising from a school closure would benefit, to some extent, many pupils not involved in the closure. But that would not be enough to gain approval. There must be no worsening of the provision afforded to the pupils directly concerned. The key factor that local education authorities have to consider in determining the pattern of school organisation in their area is that pupils should receive provision appropriate to their curricular and other educational needs. That is the key factor that my right hon. Friend has to bear in mind in considering proposals that come before him.
The hon. Member for Montgomery has raised detailed matters, both in his speech and in correspondence with me. Much has been made of the accuracy or otherwise of the forward projections of pupil numbers at the Clatter School. This is one of the points that the hon. Gentleman had in mind when he questioned me a moment ago. No one pretends that projecting numbers of pupils in future years is an exact science. There are so many imponderables that it never could be. However, it is not totally inexact and the disagreement really boils down to whether the number of pupils is likely to be 25 rather than 20, or 30 rather than 25. That is the order of magnitude. I have already told the hon. Member that I cannot agree that the case for closure should be fundamentally influenced by such variations. Judgments on the educational advantages of such proposals must be based on figures of broad magnitude rather than precise forecasts. Indeed in the case of Clatter county primary school, it can be argued that, within limits, an increase in the number of pupils would exacerbate rather than ease the difficulties. A small increase in numbers will not lead to the allocation of an additional teacher.

Mr. Carlile: If what the hon. Gentleman has just said is correct, does not that pose a threat to many primary schools in the county of Powys, which have two teachers and 30 to 40 pupils and provide a most admirable form of education?

Mr. Stradling Thomas: Whether there will be a threat will be entirely a matter of local education authority policy. The authority must make the judgments and bring

forward, in the light of its policies, proposals under the statutory procedures. I cannot say whether a threat is posed.
The two mixed-age classes would increase in size and make the teachers' task even more difficult. No one should underestimate the difficulties, even for the best of our teachers, in providing properly for a class of 15 or so children where there is a three or four year age span.
The hon. Member has argued that because my right hon. Friend's decision was based on inaccurate projections of pupil numbers his approval should be rescinded. I hesitate to cross swords with an eminent member of the legal profession on a point of law, but the legal advice that I have received is quite firm on this point. My right hon. Friend has no power to revoke his approval once it is given. This is a matter of statute and has been passed by Parliament. More important, however — this will be clear from what I have already said—we take the view that even if such a power were available, this is not a case in which my right hon. Friend would choose to exercise it. I have already explained that his decision in such cases is rarely, if ever, based on the degree of precision in pupil projections which the hon. Member has sought eloquently to argue. In this case, a small increase in numbers may be held to strengthen rather than weaken the educational arguments in favour of closure. I merely say that it is arguable.
The hon. Member mentioned the cost savings that are expected to arise as a consequence of the implementation of the proposal and has agreed that they will be minimal or even non-existent. I freely acknowledge that financial considerations are one of the main reasons why local education authorities have been urged to review their provision with a view to taking out of use places that are surplus to requirements. I also acknowledge that there are reorganisation proposals put forward by local education authorities in which the prospect of savings being largely redeployed elsewhere within the authority's schools will be an attractive and persuasive feature of those proposals. In all cases, however, the educational provision to be made for the pupils directly affected is of paramount importance to my right hon. Friend. That was certainly so in this case since the Powys local education authority did not at any stage seek to rely very heavily on financial considerations in arguing the case for closure. Nor was it a factor that loomed large in my right hon. Friend's view.
Now that the proposal has been announced, and given that the process provided for full consideration of the objections, I hope that all concerned will agree that the right thing to do is to look forward, constructively and positively, to the new provision of Caersws in 1985 and the successful integration into that school of the pupils from the Clatter school.
I conclude by saying that I hope everyone has a very merry Christmas.

Foreign Office (Structure)

Mr. Jonathan Aitken: I am grateful to have this opportunity of initiating a short debate, the purpose of which is to take a reflective and reformist look at some of the current institutional problems of British foreign policy.
The past two years have not been happy for the Foreign Office. That great Department of State has been passing through a traumatic period in which its alleged failings of judgment, communication and action have been harshly, and sometimes unfairly, criticised. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the criticisms, the Falklands crisis, the row over Grenada, the disputes over policy towards the EEC budget and the strains on our current relationship with the United States have all taken their toll of the Foreign Office in terms of internal morale and external competence.
My purpose is to look beyond individual episodes or policies and to consider whether the present institutional structure of the Foreign Office is right for the 1980s. I am, of course, aware that this issue was the subject of the Duncan commission report in the 1960s and the Central Policy Review Staff report in the 1970s. But the world has changed in the decades since those respective tomes were published. Moreover, in the aftermath of the Falklands crisis, many of the old certainties and complacencies of foreign policy-making have been shaken. I believe that the shake-up should go further. The Foreign Office's present monopoly position as the Government's sole source of advice and information on foreign affairs needs to be challenged.
While diplomacy can safely be left exclusively to diplomats, foreign policy would benefit greatly from an alternative source of official expertise, such as a scaled down British version of the National Security Council in the United States. I hope that in replying to the debate, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will take careful note of the qualifying phrase "scaled down British version", for I am enough of a realist to know that the notion of introducing a full-blooded NSC here would be fought to the last monocle by the mandarins of Whitehall. Perhaps they would be right in their opposition, for the experience of duality in United States foreign poliy is not entirely encouraging. A small country such as ours, in the conduct of its foreign policy, could not easily afford the creative tension—often a euphemism for blazing rows—between some recent United States Secretaries of State and their opposite numbers in the NSC. I therefore concede that the United States model of an NSC is not a good one for Britain to emulate.
Having said that, it must be recognised that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has already taken one intriguing step towards an NSC-type adviser, because last year she appointed Sir Anthony Parsons to a new post at No. 10 Downing street as her special adviser on foreign affairs. That has been a most interesting and beneficial development in the machinery of British Government. By coincidence, on this very day Sir Anthony relinquishes his appointment, at his own long-standing request, and goes into well-deserved retirement. I am sure that the whole House will wish him well after his long and distinguished career. But his retirement makes it all the more timely to

ask: what should follow Parsons? What sort of appointment is required and what effect should it have on the Foreign Office?
I start from the point that until recently the British Prime Minister was less well served in foreign policy matters than any comparable Head of State, because she was vulnerable to receiving only the advice that the Foreign Office put to her.
In the days of freedom on the Back Benches, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary was well seized of that point, for I recall that, as recently as August 1981, he wrote an excellent article in The Times urging the setting up of a Prime Minister's Department, complete with foreign affairs staff. I trust that he will not have changed his mind by the time that he replies to the debate.
Whether it be a foreign policy section of the Prime Minister's Department or a British NSC, I firmly believe that the present Prime Minister — indeed, any Prime Minister— needs an advisory unit at No. 10 for four basic reasons: first, to ensure that she receives an alternative view of the options on foreign policy issues that is independent of the Whitehall consensus; secondly, to look, on her behalf, for incipient crises, so that she can be briefed on political minefields before they explode; thirdly, to improve communications between the Foreign Office and No. 10, which often tend to be too formal. and to interpret the Prime Minister's thinking and preoccupations to the Foreign Office; and, fourthly, to ensure that foreign policy decisions reflect the national interest as perceived by the Government of the day. Thal is not always the same as the Foreign Office's departmental view.
If it is to achieve those objectives, the unit advising the Prime Minister must have access to all raw intelligence and Foreign Office papers. It must be adequately staffed and genuinely independent of Whitehall.
My fear about the appointment of our eminent former ambassador to China, Sir Percy Cradock, to succeed Sir Anthony Parsons at No. 10 next week is that it fails to meet the last two criteria. With due respect to Sir Percy's renowned qualifications, one man and a secretary cannot be an adequate staff for a Head of Government's alternative source of foreign policy advice and reassurance. I do not suggest that we need to set up a large, alternative, competing bureaucracy, but if the job is worth doing, it is worth starting properly.
I am also worried about the specific terms of Sir Percy's appointment, because it has been announced that, in addition to his duties as special adviser at No. 10, he will be retained by the Foreign Office as a deputy undersecretary. It is difficult to imagine an announcement more designed to make a special adviser look less than independent or more like the fifth wheel on the Foreign Office coach.
In the long term, whatever the merits of Sir Percy's appointment—and I am sure that they are considerable —the No. 10 special advisers unit or a British NSC must, as an issue of principle, be visibly independent of the Foreign Office if it is to be able to stand back and offer alternative advice to the establishment's monolithic view of foreign policy.
I said earlier that the Foreign Office sometimes held a departmental view which was not always the same as the elected Government's perception of the national interest.. On Europe, for example, the Foreign Office has for many years tenaciously held a departmental view of the EEC


which has often been far more favourable to that organisation and Britain's membership of it than have the views of elected Foreign Office Ministers. That departmental view needed to be questioned more vigorously. Although EEC subjects are now scrutinised on a broader basis as a result of Cabinet Office involvement, many other foreign policy subjects, particularly the Third world, where trouble seems more likely to erupt unpredictably, would benefit from a non-departmental view, as well as the received Foreign Office wisdom.

Mr. Tom Clarke: Hear, hear.

Mr. Aitken: I am glad that that view is shared by Labour Members, and it was promoted recently in an interesting report by the Adam Smith institute.
The need for the two views also applies to studying the intentions of our friends and allies, which are sometimes not sufficiently critically analysed by our diplomats who are happily devoted en poste to the promotion of trade and good relations and do not always see clearly where Britain's strategic interests lie.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) may develop that point later in the debate, as he has written of the need to restore the pre-war division between the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service. I agree with his central theme, that diplomacy and foreign policy are not always the same thing. Yet the present Foreign Office institutionalises the amalgamation of those two separate roles.
Some thoughtful members of the Foreign Office admit that their departments tend to get bogged down in routine diplomatic work and might benefit from having internal task forces studying specific problems, such as, say, security in the Gulf or our policy towards Central America. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will consider at least that small structural innovation.
I also hope that consideration will be given to the appointment of more non-career ambassadors. Some capitals, especially Washington, cry out for an ambassador with political clout back home. On the diplomatic scene in London there are many foreign ambassadors who are personal, political or commercial appointees, and I wonder why we do not reciprocate that formula in more of our embassies.
I hope that my comments, which I trust will provoke further discussion about structural changes in the Foreign Office, will not be regarded in simplistic terms merely as an attack on the status quo. I have travelled enough and, I hope, thought enough to have built up a tremendous admiration for those in the Foreign Office who serve our country. However, the Foreign Office must move with the mood of the times. It must recognise that its former reputation for omnipotence and omniscience has become fragile in the post-Falklands era—a fragility which, in my judgment, will get worse before it gets better, as we head for a year of bitter recriminations over our policy on the EEC, and an era in which a robust defence of British interests will be more in the national mood than will the internationalist consensus seeking which has characterised so much Foreign Office thinking.
The Foreign Office has to choose whether to hunker down in its comfortable bunkers—which I note, as a sign of the times, are under attack, which I do not agree with, from the Public Accounts Committee—and hope

that the storm of criticism will pass or to open its doors to changes along the lines of my proposals, which are really an extension of some of the innovations already tentatively introduced by the Prime Minister.
Foreign policy-making is too broad and important a subject to leave entirely to the exclusive hands and sometimes rather sheltered minds of the Foreign Office. We need the lateral thinking and the breath of intellectual fresh air that a British NSC could bring. I hope that the debate will stimulate further interest in this subject.

Mr. Julian Amery: The proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) that we should create something like the NSC deserves close and favourable consideration. We had something like the NSC a generation ago, when there were four Service Ministers and Secretaries of State for India, the Commonwealth and the Colonies, in addition to the Foreign Secretary. Together, they constituted, in the Government's defence and overseas committee, something approaching a national security council.
With the disappearance of most of those Ministries, we now have only two important overseas Departments—the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Therefore, the Prime Minister is not getting the variety of advice or information that she would have received a generation ago.
For two years I served on the appointments board of the Foreign Office which recommends the promotion of officials to various posts. I was greatly struck by the fact that the whole service, which included my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary who is to reply, was almost permanently in orbit. No one was posted anywhere for more than three years at a time and nearly all were retired at 60.
The results were depressing. When I was a Minister in the Foreign Office, my principal advisers, men of great ability, were constantly disappearing. New advisers of equal ability took their place, but they did not know the other mandarins in Whitehall and they hardly knew their own colleagues in the office. As soon as they had settled down to formulating policy, they were shifted to an embassy abroad.
All that was in marked contrast to the situation that prevailed up to the end of the second world war. The Foreign Office was theoretically amalgamated with the diplomatic service in 1919, but in practice they were not amalgamated. The Foreign Office consisted of home-based officials who spent their whole careers in London, apart, perhaps, from one five-year posting overseas. They constituted what amounted to a small think tank dedicated to analysing where British interests lay and how they could best be promoted or protected. Tyrrell, Vansittart, Cadogan and Orme Sargeant—the names that we read of in many memoirs nowadays—hardly spent any time abroad in careers lasting nearly 40 years. Indeed, Orme Sargeant avoided social contact with foreigners on principle in case friendship should interfere with objectivity. Then there was the diplomatic service, which was thought to be socially more prestigious although it was much less powerful. Ambassadors in the diplomatic service spent several years in the same capital. Lord Killearn, one of the more outstanding and controversial, spent 11 years in Cairo. As a result, his advice could not go unheeded in Whitehall and his authority in Cairo was inevitably considerable. All of that has gone.
Ambassadors now stay barely three years. Just occasionally, in recent times, we have had people such as Sir Nicholas Henderson and Sir Oliver Wright whose service has been extended for about a year after they had reached retirement age. However, three or even four years is an extremely short time in which to get to know a country well, to establish ambassadorial authority on the spot and, what is even more important, to get recommendations taken as seriously as they should be back in Whitehall.

Mr. Robert Rhodes James: What about Neville Henderson?

Mr. Amery: He is an example of an ambassador taking what I consider to be the wrong view and the office in London taking the opposite one. There was a vigorous clash of opinion between the Foreign Office and the embassy in Berlin, which unfortunately resulted in Ministers taking the wrong view. The advice given to the Foreign Secretary of the day was that which should have been given to him. Alas, that think tank of home-based officials, who are concerned not with diplomacy but with foreign policy, is lacking today.
Our practice is strangely at variance with that of many other countries. One has only to consider the record of French ambassadorial representation in Britain. M. Massiqi was seven years an ambassador, M. Chauvel five, M. de Courcel more than 10. All got to know a wide circle of people inside and outside politics in Britain and exercised influence which few British ambassadors have had time to exercise in posts abroad. The Soviets also keep their ambassadors in posts for 10 years or more. Mr. Dobrynin has been in Washington since God knows when. In the United States, many appointments are political, but the present distinguished United States Minister at the embassy in London has been nearly a decade in his post. That has given him much greater influence in London than any comparable British official overseas that I can think of.
Most other countries do not retire their ambassadors as young as we do. It seems an appalling waste of public money to spend £250,000 or so training an official to ambassadorial status and then to get only three years' service out of him. Given modern medicine, many of the ambassadors who retired when I was at the Foreign Office 10 years ago could have served with great advantage to the country for another five or 10 years beyond what they were allowed to do.
My final point concerns horses for courses. We do not consider closely enough the importance of matching the ambassador to the head of the Government of the country to which he is posted. In Third world countries, that is often an extremely important way in which to influence events. The importance, however, is not restricted to Third world countries. Lord Harlech's appointment to Washington is an outstanding example of how the right person, who is not necessarily drawn from the Foreign service—although Lord Harlech had experience of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as a Minister—can play a decisive role. I beg my hon. Friend the Minister to give some weight and thought to the proposal by my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet. South with regard to a national security council and the reflections I have just ventured to make.

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Ray Whitney): It is properly the convention for Ministers to thank right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions to the debate. I take special pleasure in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Atkin) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery). There can be no two Members of Parliament who have greater or more diverse experience of this topic. We are all in their debt for raising this subject.
The few minutes of debate that we have had today are merely the hors d'oeuvre of what I hope will be an appetising and stimulating meal. My right hon. and hon. Friends would have been surprised if I had accepted lock, stock and barrel every proposition—or perhaps any--that has been advanced. I should like to establish that no one in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office takes a panglossian view of it, just as we would not take the view that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds with regard to any other part of Government or any other human organisation. The structure of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office should be examined and could well be improved by steady evolution. The ideas that my right hon. and hon. Friends have advanced today are those that we should be and are examining.
It is true that the past few years have been difficult for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but they have been difficult for the United Kingdom. We live in a difficult world. We face the problems of our past, of the management of East-West relations and, to use the jargon, of the management of West-West relations. We should be careful about attributing the creation of those problems to an organisation, be it the Foreign and Commonwealth Office or any other part of the British Government machine. I do not claim a 100 per cent. success rate--who would dare but the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has set the issues before Ministers rather more effectively than, if I may so with respect, my right hon. and hon. Friends have allowed for.
It has emerged from the debate and the Adam Smith institute omega report that it is false to assume that there is the unanimity of voice which is assumed to come out of this well-oiled Government machine. My right hon. and hon. Friends and the Adam Smith institute have paid tribute to that machine. The institute recognises that it is a highly efficient piece of Whitehall machinery and that the diplomatic service is of high quality.
Perhaps the efficiency of that machine conceals to some extent the genuine debates that rightly go on within it. We often look to the United States. Although I recognise the caveats that my hon. Friend the member for Thanet, South entered about the proposal for a National Security Council, we are getting extremely close to a Washington-type National Security Council. Washington, being the place it is and having the constitutional structure and history that it has, is the place where, to use current jargon, it all hangs out. All the debates are conducted in megaphone diplomacy in a different sense of that phrase.
That does not happen to be the London way, and I doubt whether my right hon. and hon. Friends would welcome it. I assure them that in the panoply of Whitehall machinery —the the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, the Cabinet Office structure and its mechanisms and the


Foreign and Commonwealth Office—there is a great deal of consultation, bouncing of ideas and dissemination of information to Ministers.
There is a suggestion—for example, in the report of the Adam Smith institute — that quite a lot of information is withheld from Ministers. That is not so. The problem is to avoid burdening Ministers with a welter of information so that they have too little time to digest it. That is a perennial problem. No one has a closed mind in this or any other area. I offer the assurance that the dialectic process is alive and healthy and produces decisions which, at the end of the day, may or may not meet with the approval of hon. Members.
My right hon. and hon. Friends referred to specialisation. Should we have diplomats spending seven or 10 years in one place, or should we put them into orbit, as it were, which was the phrase used by my right hon. Friend the Member for Pavilion? The debate will continue for ever on that score.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Pavilion takes the view, which he has sustained forcefully and regularly, that the system should be slowed down and that we should talk of posts lasting for about 10 years. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) observed that there was a rather dangerous precedent in Berlin in the 1930s involving Sir Neville Henderson.
The Adam Smith institute, whose report otherwise has the approval of my right hon. and hon. Friends, suggested that there is a serious criticism that long involvement by personnel with particular areas inculcates an identification with those areas, their problems and their points of view, which leads in turn to a passive foreign policy. That is a valid viewpoint, and it poses another danger. Where is the answer?
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office recognises the problem and is working towards appointing ambassadors who will hold their posts for four years, for example, rather than three. However, there are structural problems.
I have already addressed myself to the National Security Council idea and the tensions that are created in Washington. I am not sure that it would be particularly

beneficial to our own system. I noted what my right hon. Friend the Member for Pavilion wrote in his interesting article about his time at the Colonial Office which appeared in The Telegraph on 15 December. He said that that time taught him to value
the creative if sometimes acrimonious dialogue between Whitehall and 'the field'. I was to miss it at the Foreign Office a decade later.
I am not sure whether we want to build any more acrimony within the system. We certainly want to ensure that we have a system that enables us to examine all the problems.
As I foretold, I cannot say that I accept en bloc the proposals of my right hon. and hon. Friends, but I am grateful to them for making them. I am grateful, too, for what they have said about the quality of the diplomatic service and its members. They have raised valid issues which must and will be considered. I can tell my right hon. and hon. Friends that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, with her five years' experience in Government, has considered these matters carefully. I am pleased to join the tribute that has been paid so appropriately on this day to Sir Anthony Parsons on his final retirement and the role that he has played as special adviser to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has appointed Sir Percy Cradock, and considered carefully the terms of his appointment and the range of his duties. She is clearly satisfied that, from her point of view, they will achieve the optimum arrangement to ensure that she receives the advice that she properly needs in making decisions. I believe that we must accept her experience and judgment on that score. I am sure that my right hon. and hon. Friends will accept that, under the leadership of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, we shall continue within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to consider positively and energetically, and with an intellectual openness, possible improvements in the structure of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): I thank the Minister and those hon. Members who have participated in the debate for being so brief and bringing us back to the agreed time scale.

Scott Lithgow Shipyard

Dr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Port Glagow): It will be clear to all those present in this sparsely occupied Chamber that the subject of the debate is the cancellation of the Britoil contract at the Scott Lithgow yard and the effect of the cancellation of the contract on the community of Inverclyde, on the Scottish community and on the United Kingdom offshore engineering industry. I am pleased to announce that the Prime Minister has agreed to see me on this vital issue very early in the new year.
I represent a community that is much more heavily dependent on shipbuilding and marine engineering than any other community on the mainland of Britain. That community and its industry are now both fighting for survival and the Government must not wash their hands of their responsibility towards them. My thesis is pretty straightforward: in human costs and in financial costs, it will be better for Scott Lithgow to complete the semi-submersible drilling rig than for Britoil to cancel the order.
The cancellation of the Britoil order for the semi-submersible rig that is being built in the yard spells economic and social disaster for the entire community of Inverclyde. The prospects of further orders after cancellation would be extremely bleak. The company's customer image in what is a tough market place would be extremely low.
The short-term outlook for the offshore industry is poor, with the supply of floating offshore drilling structures far exceeding present demand. There is no doubt that closure would be inevitable following the cancellation of the Britoil order, despite the false optimism that was expressed by the Minister of State on Tuesday.
Despite the hiatus in orders, the management of Scott Lithgow firmly believes that further development of deep-water oil reserves using increasingly sophisticated technology and floating platforms will represent a major market in the North sea and elsewhere for the next 20 years. Scott Lithgow is well placed to meet these future challenges. It has marvellous facilities and is rapidly gaining experience in this sector. It is gaining more experience than any other yard of its kind, and there are not many of them on mainland Britain. It is essential that the company be encouraged to continue in the sector, especially to give the United Kingdom an important and growing construction role when orders for offshore structures start to come in during 1985.
The Britoil rig—work is no longer being carried out on it--is extremely advanced technologically. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of the United Kingdom offshore engineering industry, especially the construction element, is largely dependent on the outcome of the dreadful crisis that faces us. The House should be reminded that the United Kingdom is a relative latecomer to the offshore engineering industry. For some years there was little or no involvement in the design, construction and operation of offshore structures. However, we have caught up to some extent with our competitors because of the efforts of Scott Lithgow, Cammell Laird and some of the companies in the private sector. However, the United Kingdom's involvement is still sparse and is in stark contrast to that of Norway and France, both of which have a major stake in the offshore drilling industry. It is a major

industry in northern Europe, with an annual investment of about £4 billion, which will continue for several decades to come.
No one can deny that the United Kingdom offshore engineering enterprises have an important contribution to make. Moreover, it is widely believed that as the offshore fields become smaller and the profit margins less wide and certain, more and more companies will switch to floating production systems, and Scott Lithgow has a major role to play in those developments.
How can the company survive the humiliation of losing the contract in this tough market place? How can Scotland and the rest of Britain survive such a dreadful humiliation? Such a cancellation will lead to closure within the next few months. The closure will cost the United Kingdom dear. The costs will be severe, and the damage will not be confined to the Scottish economy, but will extend to the future prospects of the United Kingdom offshore engineering industry which, as I said, is an industry of the greatest importance. In Inverclyde we possess the skills, knowledge and physical facilities. That is a valuable national asset in the area. I remind the House that we are an oil-producing nation, and the Government should not deny the country a stake in the construction technology that is required by the industry.
It cannot be denied that the shipbuilding industry in general, and Scott Lithgow in particular, has suffered managerial problems in the past. There were woeful inadequacies in project management. No one is blameless, and I readily acknowledge that there have been failures on both sides in industrial relations. To suggest otherwise would be false. However, I assure the House that there have been significant improvements in the recent past, both in productivity and the quality of the work produced by the work force. It would appear that the Government are willing— indeed eager--to ignore those improvements and to disregard the positive response that was made by the shop stewards committee at the yard to get together with management to hammer out an agreement on job flexibility and interchangeability. What I find deeply disturbing — a feeling that is shared by many of my constituents and by many other people in Scotland--is the indifference — indeed, the hostility — of some Ministers to both management and work force at Scott Lithgow.
That hostility has been demonstrated by some of the gratuitously offensive references to management and work force by Ministers, including the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Similarly disturbing, to my mind, was the slighting comment made by the Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry, to the telegram that was sent by Cardinal Gray to the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Minister said that he was not sure what special qualifications the leaders of the Roman Catholic church had for making a judgment on the future of the yard.
I assure the House and the Minister that Cardinal Gray, who is highly respected as a church leader among people of all denominations in Scotland and, indeed, among people of no denomination. was expressing his deep concern at the social consequences of the cancellation of this contract. This is what he said:
We urgently implore you to continue your fight to save not only the yard, but the thousands of jobs that are now in jeopardy.


The survival of Scott Lithgows must not be assessed simply in commercial terms but must be emphasised as a human disaster which will lead to the death of a community.
The Secretary of State for Scotland should make no distinction between what is happening at Scott Lithgow and recent developments at Ravenscraig. Any distinction in terms of resignation would be spurious. If he cannot persuade his ministerial colleagues to change their views, their refusal to intervene, he should resign, and I said so in an early-day motion yesterday.
I am convinced that it would be much less costly, both socially and financially, to continue with the contract. For example, the anticipated redundancy payments that will result from the closure of Scott Lithgow, based on the present work force of 4,200, would be about £36 million. Approximately £20 million per annum would be required to provide the unemployed workers from Scott Lithgow with social security benefits, which I hope would decrease naturally with time as some people found work. If the contract is cancelled, £40 million will have to be paid to Britoil. So the approximate total cost of cancellation and the inevitable closure would be in the region of £96 million. In addition, there are the cancellation penalties and costs vis-a-vis suppliers and subcontractors. Those costs would surely take the figure to more than £100 million. I cannot believe that the cost of renegotiation, of completion of the rig, would be more than that very high figure.
So those are the financial costs. The social costs would be dreadful. The community already suffers from an unemployment rate of about 20 per cent. among adult males. That figure would double if Scott Lithgow were to close. It is up to the Government, not the Opposition, to show that the financial costs of cancellation and closure does not exceed that of renegotiation and completion.
When I see the human, social, economic and physical devastation in west central Scotland I am reminded of Saul Bellow's Dean Caude in his book "The Dean's December". The dean, who is the head of a faculty at Chicago university, situated in the heart of the black community there, forms the belief that he is surrounded by an "under-class" made up of people who are superfluous to the requirements of the labour market. Similarly what we are seeing in Scotland, as a result of the Government's indifference, is the creation of a Scottish under-class, made up of ex-miners and their children, ex-textile workers and their children, ex-smelter workers and their children and ex-shipyard workers and their children. That is what is happening in Scotland. The Government's indifference is encouraging the development of a class of people with no hope. It is a bleak state of affairs for Scotland. Moreover, it is a bleak state of affairs for mainland Britain also if we lose this valuable national asset, Scott Lithgow.
I say to Ministers, "For God's sake, put aside your metropolitan indifference, your lack of concern, and intervene directly in the negotiations between Britoil and British Shipbuilders on behalf of the offshore engineering industry, the people of Inverclyde, and Scotland as a whole."

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. John Butcher): I congratulate the hon.
Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) on securing the debate. I fully understand the concern that he has expressed on behalf of his constituents and why he has pressed this issue in the period immediately before Christmas.
The hon. Gentleman spoke of a dreadful crisis, and it is just that. It is distressing and depressing. We are not indifferent to the huge social implications of the Scott Lithgow crisis. However, I hope that he will also understand that our opposition has been to bad working practices and to anything that has got in the way of increasing productivity in British shipbuilding generally, and at Scott Lithgow. We are anxious to see a shipbuilding industry in the United Kingdom that can compete with our international competitors.
It is customary on these occasions to say that one is grateful to an hon. Member for raising a particular issue. Although I recognise the hon. Gentleman's concern on a matter that is of great importance for his constituency, I must say that I believe that the statement of my hon. Friend the Minister of State on Tuesday of this week, and the questions that followed have covered much of the ground that we in this House can cover.
Moreover, the hon. Gentleman will know that legal proceedings have now been instituted between British Shipbuilders and Britoil's agents. It is, therefore, not open to me to discuss in any detail the merits or demerits of what is now a contractual dispute. The issue between BS and Britoil is sub judice. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that that limits what I would have liked, in other circumstances, to have said.
I should, however, like to get the facts straight.

Dr. Godman: Is it really the case that the matter is now sub judice? I do not want to make too many interventions, but I speak as an ex-shipyard worker with a fairly deep knowledge of the industry. Will not the Minister accept that there have been marked improvements in industrial relations and productivity at Scott Lithgow?

Mr. Butcher: I do not dispute that there have been improvements in productivity. Of course, we should like to see that continue throughout the industry. However, in this contractual dispute—the cause of the immediate crisis at Scott Lithgow—proceedings are taking place between two parties and it would be most unwise for any hon. Member to judge the outcome of that dispute.
Britoil's agent, Lloyds Leasing, is acting on behalf of a company partly owned by Britoil. It signed a contract in December 1981 with Scott Lithgow for the construction of this very advanced rig. It is a dynamically positioned heavy duty semi-submersible exploration rig, of a kind never before built in the United Kingdom.
Construction began in February 1982. As my hon. Friend told the House on 20 December, by March 1983 —that is, only a year after it had started— BS had already had to provide for losses of the staggering total of £44 million. That is roughly half the value of the contract. I underline that point because I do not think that some hon. Members have fully appreciated precisely how much BS has already lost on this contract.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about indifference, but we subsidised that yard to the tune of about £15,000 per employee last year alone. Since nationalisation, we have subsidised each individual job at Scott Lithgow to the tune of about £25,000. That is not indifference, but a level of


funding that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State have justified in the past. We now find that that justification is becoming thinner by the day.

Dr. Godman: The hon. Gentleman has readily acknowledged how important the whole issue is to those whom I have the honour to represent. However, how does that investment per worker compare with the investment made per employee over the past few years at British Leyland?

Mr. Butcher: It should be borne in mind that the dramatic increases that have been made in productivity at British Leyland and British Steel in order to match such increases in western Europe— and soon, we hope, to match those in the far east—are the very things that we want to see in British Shipbuilders as a whole. Therefore, there is no inconsistency in the Government's line. We have put in public funding and made very strict demands on the nationalised industry bosses that they should see to it that we match the productivity rates of international competition. I hope that the whole House will join me in endorsing that objective for those three industries and, indeed, for all our major nationalised industries.
In October 1983. Britoil demanded—as it has the right to do under its contract — that Scott Lithgow should demonstrate the ability to complete the rig within 300 days of the contractual delivery date of April 1984. Scott Lithgow did indeed offer a demonstration of its ability to complete under the terms of the contract. However, on 19 December, Britoil's agents issued a notice of cancellation. As the hon. Gentleman knows, BS has now issued a writ contesting the validity of that notice.
The hon. Gentleman has spoken today about the implications of this cancellation—if it takes place—for the future of Scott Lithgow. The first point I should like to emphasise is that we are not here talking about the closure of Scott Lithgow. To talk in these terms is premature. If the cancellation takes place, the jobs of up to 2,000 Scott Lithgow employees will be immediately at risk, but I want hon. Members to be clear that there are in addition two other vessels being built in the yard. They are due for completion next year. It is the intention of BS to continue to work on these contracts and to complete them according to plan.
However, even as these other contracts are being completed, it is undoubtedly true that cancellation of the Britoil contract would lead to large-scale job losses. The hon. Member has spoken about the scale of those job losses and their impact on the local economy. I fully share the concern that he has expressed at the effects of a cancellation on his constituents. Although I cannot endorse his estimate of the total impact on the economy of the west of Scotland, the Government accept that the consequences for the families of those who might lose their jobs, and for businesses supplying Scott Lithgow could be devastating.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has said that he stands ready to alleviate, as far as he can, the immediate impact on the local community of large-scale redundancies, should they occur. We recognise, of course, that the impact could be deeper and wider than the immediate financial loss to those affected. Scott Lithgow has, since its move into offshore work, developed some particular skills which we would be very sorry to see lost

to the Scottish economy. As some hon. Members pointed out recently, advanced offshore construction is one of the "new industries" that we would like to encourage to develop.
It is therefore particularly ironic that the work force in that threatened yard has shown no signs of resisting the call for national industrial action that has been made by the shipbuilding union leadership. I find it extraordinary that many hon. Members have not seen fit to issue a public call to their hard-pressed constituents to avoid what I can only describe as a self-inflicted wound that might well prove fatal. Given the crisis at Scott Lithgow and the problems facing the British shipbuilding industry generally, the call for a strike on 6 January is an act of mindless folly. It will be heard with disbelief by shipbuilding trade unionists in Germany, Sweden, Japan and Korea. That disbelief may be replaced by a realisation that a strike in the United Kingdom will serve the interests of foreign shipbuilders. It may well be that the strike call will be cheered to the echo from Hamburg to Hyundai.
The Government have over the past few days, been pressed from many quarters to take steps to intervene in this situation. As my hon. Friend told the House on Tuesday, it would be quite wrong for us to do so. This is a commercial dispute. Quite apart from the question of legal proceedings, it would be wrong for the Government to seek to influence either party.
The hon. Gentleman has said that the sheer scale of the jobs at risk makes it essential for the Government to intervene. I say in reply that the time for intervention is past. We have intervened in the affairs of Scott Lithgow for far too long. Since nationalisation, it has made losses of £165 million.
In addition, subsidies to the extent of £17 million have been made availabe to the company. The bill for all this has been footed by the taxpayer and the poor performance of Scott Lithgow over a long period has been massively subsidised. It is nonsense for hon. Members to accuse us of failing to support Scott Lithgow. Scott Lithgow has had fair warning of the consequences of its failure to complete.

Mr. Dick Douglas: Surely the Under-Secretary of State should note the long history of successful completion of orders by the yard and the work force. I have had over the years direct relationships with the yard. It built two drill ships of world class dimensions and capability, which are performing well. It graduated into the offshore market over a long period. The skills are there. If I did not think that this rig could be completed by the work force under proper management control and supervision, I would not go in to bat for them. The work force has a good record, and it is wrong for the Under-Secretary of State to say that the Government should not intervene. If the Government will not intervene they will be reneging 6n their responsibilities.

Mr. Butcher: Reneging on our responsibilities is not an appropriate accusation to make in the context of Scott Lithgow. We have put in tens of millions of pounds to this yard and, indeed, to the British shipbuilding industry generally. We have seen our responsiblities through. It is nonsense for hon. Members to accuse us of failing to support the company.
Finally, I must emphasise once again that, even as we speak, the threat of industrial action hangs over the whole industry, and Scott Lithgow is included. It places a huge


responsibility on us all to watch the guidance we give to those who are involved in shipbuilding in Scotland today. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will be aware of that awful responsibility in the interests of a future shipbuilding industry in the United Kingdom.

Lennard Hospital, Bromley(Closure)

Mr. John Hunt: I welcome this opportunity to draw Parliament's attention to a matter that is causing great local concern in the Bromley area. I refer to the proposal made by the Bromley health authority to close the Lennard hospital at Bromley common in my constituency and to accommodate the geriatric patients there in hutted wards at Farnborough hospital, the day hospital being relocated at Beckenham. I am pleased to see my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) present for the debate today. If he is able to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I know that he will want to make a brief contribution.
The history of this matter is that in May this year the Bromley health authority published its district bed strategy for the 10 years from 1983 to 1992. It is worth noting that it was stressed at that time that the document was essentially a discussion paper. It certainly aroused a great deal of discussion.
In my view, the Bromley health authority deserves full credit for presenting its strategy in this helpful and comprehensive way, although I am bound to say that I believe its subsequent actions and decisions may be open to question and criticism. I shall be developing that point during the course of my remarks.
The document set out five possible options for future geriatric care, but in the end the health authority debate on 20 September concentrated on option 2, the consequences of which I have already described to the House, and option 6, which was an additional option, put forward at the meeting, proposing the total transfer of geriatric care from the Lennard to the Beckenham hospital. There was a tied vote between those two options, but, because the chairman understandably wanted to avoid using his casting vote, the debate was allowed to proceed. After further discussion, one member of the authority changed her mind and option 2 was then carried by the narrowest majority. I recount that merely to emphasise that the health authority's decision in this matter was far from unanimous. Indeed, the authority, as I have shown, was almost equally split, and its final decision was taken against the advice of the medical advisory committee.
The measures now being taken by the Bromley health authority under option 2 are described as temporary, to meet an immediate financial crisis. But the fear of many, including the community health council and the Lennard hospital action group, which has wide support in the area, is that once the Lennard hospital is run down — I understand that it is due to close by 23 March of next year —we and, indeed, the Minister will be faced with a fait accompli. I hope that we may be able to have some reassurance about that matter in the course of my hon. Friend's reply today.
The purpose of this debate, therefore, is to alert my hon. Friend to what is happening and to secure more time for fuller consideration of all the implications of the policy on which the Bromley health authority has embarked. I understand that the authority will be initiating the formal consultation process early in the new year, but unless there is some immediate ministerial guidance, I fear that the proposal for the temporary closure of the Lennard hospital will, for all practical purposes, become irrevocable.
I must also report that at its meeting on Monday, the Bromley community health council put forward an alternative solution. As this affects Beckenham hospital, which is not in my constituency, it would be improper for me to discuss the merits or otherwise of its counterproposal in this debate today. However, I think that the community health council's views, together with the various options put forward in the health authority's original document, indicate that there are a number of viable alternatives to the plan that has been adopted. Therefore, I hope that my hon. Friend will look carefully at all of these possibilities before coming to a final conclusion.
The Lennard hospital is situated in my constituency in a pleasant rural setting on the fringe of the green belt, and anyone visiting it gets an impression of space and tranquility. It began life as a fever hospital, but since 1962 it has been used solely as a hospital for the elderly, with its dedicated nursing staff attracting international praise and respect. In 1972, the Lennard hospital introduced a new concept in nursing—the five-day ward—which was funded by the Queen's Institution for Home Nursing and the King Edward Hospital Fund for London. Under this arrangement, patients stay for five days in hospital and then go home at weekends. The average stay is just four weeks. This provision is meeting a real need. My worry is that, under the option 2 proposal, there is, as I understand it, no provision for a replacement for this five-day ward.
Perhaps the most distressing and regrettable feature of the option 2 proposal is the separation of geriatric patients frm the day hospital and the consequent loss of the invaluable interaction between the two.
I recognise that the bed strategy at Bromley must be seen in the context of the redistribution of National Health Service resources—the famous, or perhaps infamous, RAWP formula that decrees a reducing revenue allocation for authorities, such as Bromley, that are deemed to be over-endowed. That policy started a long time ago—it is by no means the responsibility of this Administration —and it is accepted, albeit reluctantly, by most of my constituents. Such a redistribution, however, imposes on us an obligation to make the most sensible and far-sighted use of the resources that we have, and I wonder whether the authority's present proposals for the replacement of the Lennard hospital do that.
Another important factor to be taken into account in hospital planning in Bromley is the present imbalance of hospital provision in the borough. Some 60 per cent. of the population live in the northern part of the borough, but most of the hospital facilities are in the southern part. Indeed, at the Lennard hospital, which is in the south, 72 per cent. of the patients come from the northern part of Bromley. That is clearly inconvenient for the patients and their visiting relatives. I believe that future plans and proposals for hospital provision, geriatric and general, should more closely reflect the population patterns in the borough. In that respect, there is a strong case for an expansion of the acute bed provision at Bromley hospital, but that is another subject and perhaps I shall be seeking another Adjournment debate in due course to explore more fully that aspect of hospital care in the Bromley area.
The Government rightly give high priority to geriatric provision in the NHS. In my view, the establishment of

this priority dictates that the proposals of Bromley health authority relating to geriatric provision should be considered with critical care.
In a recent visit to the hospitals in my constituency, I was repeatedly told of geriatric patients occupying acute beds which could otherwise be made available to other patients. That emphasises the continuing need for more geriatric provision and the importance of an expanded provision of part 3 sheltered accommodation, provided by the local authorities or housing associations. Greater emphasis on the provision of this type of housing for the elderly would do more than anything else to release acute beds in our general hospitals and relieve pressure on geriatric beds. At the same time, it would enable the frail elderly to live settled and contented lives in the community. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will consult his colleagues at the Department of the Environment to see what new initiatives can usefully be taken in that important area.
To return to the special problem of the Lennard hospital, I hope that as soon as the formal consultation procedure is initiated, the necessary local comments are obtained and the alternative proposals are submitted by the community health council, my hon. Friend w ill act speedily to resolve our local anxieties. In doing that, I hope that he will give full weight to the points that I have outlined today. I also hope that in reply to the debate he will give an assurance that there is no fait accompli and that the closure of the Lennard hospital will be sanctioned only when a viable and acceptable alternative has emerged. At present, I do not believe that the proposals of the Bromley health authority meet that crucial test.

Mr. Roger Sims (Chiselhurst): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Ravensbourne (Mr. Hunt) and the Minister for allowing me to make a brief contribution.
My hon. Friend referred to the imbalance of provision in the Bromley district health authority area. As it happens, there is not one hospital in my constituency; all the medical facilities of that character are in the other three constituencies in the borough. Naturally they are used by my constituents, so I am concerned about the situation that has arisen. I do not intend to refer to any particular hospital for that reason, but I shall emphasise some of the points that my hon. Friend made, in particular the fact that Bromley district health authority has been placed in a very difficult position. To meet the financial limits it has been faced with various options, all of them unpalatable, and my hon. Friend described how hard it was for the authority to reach its recent decision.
The financial problems facing the authority stem from various causes, one of which is the so-called Lawson cuts, which did not make life any easier for the authority, particularly coming mid-year and without warning. Then there was the 0·5 per cent. cut in staff, which again appears to have been imposed in a rather overall manner and without consideration of the extent to which staff economies may have been effected in the past. I appreciate that the Department is now implementing so-called performance indicators, which may in the future give some idea of how well one authority is run compared with another, but for the time being these cuts are imposed on an overall basis.
Then there is the problem of the application of the RAWP formula, to which my hon. Friend referred. I am


sure that the Minister will say that the financial allocation to each district is a matter for the region, and that is true, but the allocation to the region is a matter for the Secretary of State, so the way in which RAWP works out is eventually a departmental responsibility.
I realise that there is a disparity between regions and a disparity between districts within regions. But the theory, after all, of RAWP was that the well-endowed areas, such as Bromley, should stand still to allow the less well-off areas to catch up. The reality of the situation is that there is a loss of hundreds of thousands of pounds in real terms to areas such as Bromley, and I ask the Minister to have another look at the way in which the RAWP formula is affecting areas such as Bromley.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. John Patten): I am pleased that we heard this morning from my hon. Friend the Member for Ravensbourne (Mr. Hunt) and that my hon. Friend the Member for Chiselhurst (Mr. Sims) was able to make his voice heard on behalf of his constituents. Although they do not have a hospital, they have an interest in the hospitals in the Bromley area. My hon. Friend the Member for Ravensbourne made a forceful case, and I know that there is considerable local feeling about the Lennard hospital. That depth of feeling has been reflected in the robust way in which my hon. Friend has brought the case to the notice of the DHSS and discussed it with Ministers. I hope that what I can say in the brief time available to me will provide some reassurance to him, even if I am not able to go in great detail into the issues of RAWP.
All hon. Members would agree that the Bromley health authority has a difficult task, and we should collectively pay tribute to the chairman and members for the way in which it has faced up to it. I appreciate that my hon. Friends are not criticising directly any individual on the authority, and I am glad that both my hon. Friends assent to that assertion.
The decisions made on 20 September were caused by the urgent need to bring the authority's expenditure level within its cash limit. Mr. Deputy Speaker, as you know from listening to many other Adjournment debates—they normally occur not when daylight is coming into the Chamber but much later, at night—I have said that temporary closures can be made because of the urgent need to bring the authority's level of spending within its cash limit. The Department of Health and Social Security accepts that point.
My Department's guidance to health authorities such as Bromley clearly stresses that, where there is any prospect of temporary closures becoming permanent, consultations under the established procedures must occur as quickly as possible. The Bromley health authority proposes that all the temporary closures on which it has recently decided should become permanent. In accordance with our strict guidance, it proposes in January next year—only a couple of weeks' time — to issue a consultation document that fully explains its proposals and the reasons behind them.
I was interested in the report by my hon. Friend the Member for Ravensbourne on the outcome of the community health council's meeting on Monday. I was not aware of that meeting or what it decided. We may hear

more at a later stage in writing about what occurred at that meeting. I was pleased also to hear what he said about his deep anxiety, and long-term views, which I know have been reflected in correspondence with my Department, about the pattern of care within the Bromley area as a whole. I urge him to make those views known forcefully, first to the health authority as the local body having the job of deciding the pattern of long-term action.

Mr. John Hunt: I assure my hon. Friend that the health authority is well aware of my views and is responsive to them. I believe that he is thinking along the same lines as I am, and I am sure that that will be reflected in the proposals that are put to his Department.

Mr. Patten: I am reassured to know that my hon. Friend and the health authority are working closely on those issues. I am convinced that, from time to time, Ministers must intervene in such cases, especially when closure proposals are brought to them. Those decisions are best made in the local context within the framework of local feeling. I do not intend to bore the House by going through a lengthy discussion of consultation procedures that must be carried out. I suspect that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, has heard them on many occasions in the past.
I make it crystal clear that where proposals are referred to Ministers, they will not—I stress the word "not"—agree to any closure or any change of use unless it is clearly demonstrated to be in the best interests of local health services and the communities they serve. I am happy to give that assurance. It would not be appropriate for me to intervene at this stage as the consultative process on the proposed permanent closures and changes of use in Bromley has not yet begun, and I must not prejudice our ministerial position. I am advised that the consultation document will set out all the implications of the various proposals. My hon. Friends the Members for Ravensbourne and for Chislehurst will both automatically be invited to comment when the document goes out for consultation.
I am happy to assure my hon. Friend the Member for Ravensbourne that he need have no fear that, because these proposals have been made and temporary closures have taken place, the consultation process is in any way pre-empted or that temporary closures will automatically become permanent. If the proposals come to us for decision, the long-term interests of the Health Service in the Bromley district will be our primary concern. We shall make those decisions in that light if such matters come to Ministers for decision, as I suspect they will because of the strength of local feeling.
To reinforce that point it is important to remember why the Bromley health authority has been faced with such problems. There are the implications of the RAWP process, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst has drawn attention. I reassure him that we shall keep the RAWP formula constantly under review. I shall bear his points in mind.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst made important comments about the changes in expenditure patterns, introduced following the announcement in July by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Chislehurst and for Ravensbourne are aware of the impact of that announcement on the Bromley health authority.
Nursing costs in Bromley — my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst dealt with this—which will be


illustrated by the performance indicators, when they are available, are above average for the south-east Thames region. Performance indicators do not answer any questions, but they take us into certain directions and enable us to ask some pertinent questions about those costs. Budgets for 1983–84 nearer the regional average were set by the authority, but it became clear during this financial year that the required reductions were not being made. There has been a forecast of net overspending by the end of this year for which provision has been made. The authority responsible for the allocation of resources within the districts that make up the south-east Thames region has acted promptly and increased Bromley's cash limit this financial year by £500,000 — a not inconsiderable sum—to try to help the Bromley health authority, on condition that it undertakes a programme to recover the deficit.
Bromley needs to consider how it can most effectively use its resources for the benefit of patients. In that context, I am especially glad to note that the authority intends to make savings of at least 10 per cent. this year on catering, cleaning and laundry by going out to competitive tender. The health authority was one of the foremost in the country in making those plans, and it is to be congratulated on what it is doing to save money for patient care, which is as necessary a process in Scotland as in England, as the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) and the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) have just heard. The authority has decided on the temporary measures that I have outlined and will consult about making them permanent.
The authority believes that the proposed closure of the Lennard hospital could have advantages for patients. It believes that there is a much wider range of back-up medical facilities available at the Farnborough hospital to which beds might be transferred in due course. Farnborough hospital has claimed — I use the word "claimed" because the DHSS has examined no options, and has come to no decisions—to be more convenient in terms of public transport than Lennard hospital. I do not know about that, as I am not aware of the bus services in the area.
The authority also believes that its proposals are consistent with—[Interruption.] I had hoped that the hon. Member for Fife, Central might restrain himself until the next debate, because the Government are examining an issue that concerns all hon. Members. I should be grateful if I could continue to discuss the issue in a responsible way.
The authority also believes that its proposals are consistent with its strategic aim of improving health care facilities in the north of the district, where the bulk of the population lives. If proposals eventually come to Ministers, they will be looked at afresh. We have considered no options and we have ruled out no options. We are not committed to any course of action. I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friends the Members for Ravensbourne and for Chislehurst will accept that in this context a temporary closure does not mean a fait accompli.

Fortress Falklands Policy (Cost)

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Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: The third report of the all-party Select Committee on Defence, published earlier this year as House of Commons Paper 154, dealt with the future defence of the Falkland Islands. Chapter 10 of the report dealt exclusively with cost. I shall not go into the detailed figures provided by the Ministry of Defence, save to say that for the next three years the additional defence costs arising from the Falklands will be about £1,860 million. Moreover, the Government have stated that that extra sum will be added to the existing Defence Estimates when defence is already the main growth area in Government expenditure.
The Government constantly tell us that there is no money. There was a further demonstration of that less than five minutes ago. Conservative Members have appealed to the Government not to close their local hospital, but the Government say that there is no money for hospitals, just as there is little money for housing, nurses' pay or railway modernisation—but, by heaven, for an exercise such as that in the Falklands there is Literally no limit to the money available.
The additional funds for this fortress 8,000 miles away are enormous. Capital expenditure on infrastructure projects now being embarked upon — the building of barracks for the troops and the building of roads where none existed previously, not to mention more than £200 million for the building of an airfield and the additional cost of keeping forces there rather than in the United Kingdom—will amount to £424 million this year, £334 million in 1984–85 and £232 million in 1985–86.

Mr. George Foulkes: At the very least.

Mr. Hamilton: Yes, indeed, and I shall return to that. My hon. Friend knows a great deal about this, as he visited the Falklands with the Select Committee to see where the money was going.
In addition, the cost of replacing equipment lost in the Falklands war is expected to be £870 million in the next three years, followed by a further £200 million to be spent on completing the naval shipbuilding programme. Those are mind-numbing figures, but even they do not tell the whole story. Ministry of Defence figures never do. For instance, they do not take account of inflation, and no element is included for possible increases in the rate of depreciation of aircraft, ships and other equipment through intensive use in appalling weather conditions.
The Select Committee in its conclusions and recommendations expressed some fear — I put it no higher than that—that the vast sums to be spent in the south Atlantic would adversely affect our ability to meet more important defence obligations in the European theatre of NATO. That fear is widely shared by Members on both sides of the House—not least, I suspect, by the Minister himself. His response to the Select Committee's recorrunendations certainly seemed to imply that. Nevertheless, he echoed the Prime Minister's statement that, whatever the cost—we should mark those words—we must go on pouring taxpayers' money into this bottomless pit.
On the Government's estimates, about £2,000 million is to be committed over the next three years, but the waste will almost certainly be far more than that. The Financial Times of 2 February stated:
On the Government's published sums the Falklands will however cost £2·52 billion until 1985–86.
That £252,000 million of taxpayers' money represents more than £15 million per week until 1985–86. For what? To defend the rights of 1,800 folk in whom successive Governments hitherto expressed no great interest. It works out at about £1·5 million per head. In other words, it would have been cheaper for the Government and the taxpayer to offer the islanders £1 million each to go off to New Zealand, Canada or somewhere else rather than expect the British taxpayer constantly to write out blank cheques on their behalf.
At no time in the United Kingdom, or, I suspect, anywhere in the world, have any Government been so profligate with other people's money. Yet the same Government have the cheek to castigate local councils and, as we heard a few minutes ago, hospital authorities for waste and extravagance. Those bodies are tight-fisted Scrooges compared with the fecklessness of the Government in their Falklands exercise. The hon. Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) referred in the previous debate to the closure of local hospitals due to the "Lawson cuts". Even the Chancellor himself is worried about the enormous bills now being presented to pay for the Falklands folly.
There is great pressure on the Prime Minister from all quarters to unfreeze and to see the folly of her ways. She rode to power in June in large part as a result of the jingoism that she whipped up about the Falklands war. At that time, she uttered fine words direct to the islanders about their "paramount" right to decide what they wanted. That is what the war was all about. Now, however, only 18 months later, the air is thick with chickens coming home to roost, and it is not a pleasant sight for the British taxpayer. In an earlier incarnation the Minister made far more powerful speeches than mine from the Back Benches condemning the Government for their folly in these matters. He was very far-sighted then, but I suspect that he will make a very different speech today because he has been briefed by the Prime Minister.
The Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office must know that we are being hurt in several ways in this regard. The United States, for instance, is determined to go ahead and mend its fences vis-a-vis Argentina and South America generally. It intends to supply arms to Argentina. The Americans say that they are sure that the supplies will not be used in war. I do not know how they can draw the line. Our relations with the United States are being unnecessarily strained as a direct consequence of our inflexible attitude to the Falklands. The so-called special relationship is increasingly becoming nonsense, and the Falklands policy is making it even worse. The present inflexibility of the United Kingdom is also damaging our relations with almost every Latin American country, with no apparent offsetting advantage. As The Sunday Times stated on 11 December, the spending of the colossal sums to which I have referred is
a Ruritanian folly, disconnected from any other British defence interests — indeed possibly harmful to more pressing commitments.
We all say "hear, hear" to that.
The Falkland islanders are also suffering from these policies. They are living in cloud-cuckoo-land, but it is a cloud-cuckoo-land surrounded by guns, soldiers and war planes. Their way of life, which presumably we fought a war to defend, is being destroyed and can never be restored.
We are rapidly becoming isolated in the world community of nations by the Prime Minister's apparent inability, or unwillingness, to take the initiative that is there for the taking with the advent of a new democratic Government in Argentina. The Government should follow the rule of holes expounded by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey)—"If you are in a hole, for God's sake stop digging." For the sake of the taxpayers and the national interest, the Government should swallow their pride and talk to the new Argentine Government. It is not enough just to send Christmas greetings, as the Prime Minister has done. Let us exchange ambassadors and start talking without preconditions. Let us not say that sovereignty is not on the table. Whether we like it or not, sovereignty has to be on the table. We cannot for ever pretend to sustain a fortress 8,000 miles away which has no conceivable defence interest for us at all.

Mr. Foulkes: My hon. Friend is not alone in holding those views. It is not only Opposition Members who feel that the Government should take the action that he suggests. Only last week, the South Atlantic Council was formed. It includes Churchmen of all denominations, academics and members of every party, including the hon. Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend), who is present today. We are urging the Prime Minister to take the action suggested by my hon. Friend. His views, which are widespread throughout the country, are held by an increasing number of Conservative Members.

Mr. Hamilton: The Minister knows that that is so. I hope that he will concede that there is increasing pressure from all parts of the political spectrum and all areas of national life for a change in policy. We cannot continue to allow our resources to be drained away to the south Atlantic for no long-term or even short-term reason.
The Government accept that it is inevitable that the Chinese will soon be in control of Hong Kong. There is no question of sending a task force there, despite what the residents might want. Gibraltar is a similar case. So, too, we shall have to bow to the inevitable in the south Atlantic. If we do not, as revenues from North sea oil start to decline and hundreds of millions of pounds are drained away for the south Atlantic, the British economy will soon end up in the knacker's yard.
I hope that the Government will see sense before it is too late, talk about sovereignty with the Argentine Government, and tell the Falkland islanders that they cannot have a veto over what Parliament and the British Government may decide that their future shall be.

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Ray Whitney): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) for giving us an opportunity to review yet again a very important problem that the House should constantly consider. Despite his invitations, the hon. Gentleman will not expect me to accept his thesis. I shall try to show that


in a number of areas he is in danger of allowing his own political prejudices to creep in and colour what is, I accept, his very sincere concern.
It was not our choice to develop what the hon. Gentleman is pleased to call—we believe it to be a misnomer — fortress Falklands. The development of adequate defences was forced on us by the action of the Argentine military junta in April 1982. The hon. Gentleman was kind enough to refer to the speech that I made on the day after the invasion. I am very happy to recall what I said on that occasion. I urged the Government, as our fleet steamed to the south Atlantic, to negotiate earnestly to find a way to a peaceful resolution of the problem, involving the removal of the Argentine forces and security for the future of the Falkland islanders. If the hon. Gentleman read once again the White Paper on the negotiations, even he would have to accept that, in the six or seven weeks following the launching of the task force, the Government negotiated with great seriousness and sincerity. Sadly, the Argentine military regime under General Galtieri decided, for very ill-advised reasons, that it was not necessary to pursue the path of negotiation. The Argentines believed that they could hold on to what they had gained by military invasion.
The British people fully supported the Government at that time in the action that they took. It was an incredible performance by the British people. In the initial debate, the Government were strongly supported by most Opposition Members. During the following weeks, as the series of Falkland islands debates unfolded, the position of the Labour party changed step by step. However, the basic proposition that we could not tolerate such an invasion without ensuring that it was brought to an end was at one stage accepted by the vast majority of people in this country and by most right hon. and hon. Members.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the sums involved in meeting the obligations that have been—I emphasise once again — forced upon us by the action of the previous Argentine Government. I confirm that in this year's defence budget there is an additional £624 million for Falklands costs, including £424 million for the extra cost of the garrison. The residue is for the continuing costs of the operation, principally, the replacement of equipment lost in the campaign. Next year, the corresponding figure will be £684 million of which £324 million—about 2 per cent. of total planned expenditure —is for the Falklands garrison. Those figures include the capital costs of the new airfield which, when completed, will facilitate the reinforcement of the garrison should, as we all hope will not be the case, it ever become necessary and the Falklands come under threat again.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will also accept that the development of the airfield will go a long way towards fulfilling one important recommendation of Lord Shackleton and his colleagues, that such an airfield is needed for the economic development of the islands. However costly the airport undoubtedly is, it must be accepted for the strategic requirement forced upon us. I hope the hon. Gentleman will take some cognisance of the impact that it will have on the island's economic development.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned anxieties about the effects on NATO. That is fully appreciated by my right hon. Friends, and it is precisely because of that that we have assured ourselves that our NATO commitment is not weakened by that additional expenditure. In many ways,

there will be assets for the Ministry of Defence which we hope in the future will increase the overall effectiveness of our armed forces.

Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: My hon. Friend has made a serious point when he says that our NATO forces will not be weakened. Is that correct, bearing in mind that some five out of 50 surface ships are permanently engaged in defending the Falkland Islands and their immediate environment? Would it not be more realistic for the Front Bench to express some worry about that maritime commitment?

Mr. Whitney: I recognise that there is a problem. My right hon. Friends understand that. We cannot have it both ways. The complaint is of great defence expenditure being incurred. One of the problems it that we must ensure that our overall defence capability is being maintained It is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for
Defence rather than a junior Minister in the Foreign Office, but I understand that our NATO allies recognise the problem and are content that the overall NATO capability is not diminished.
The hon. Member for Fife, Central levied charges of fecklessness, profligacy and similar hyperbole against us. I do not believe that we can be feckless or profligate in defence of the important principle of freedom. I hope that the hon. Member will not pretend to put a price on that concept. The Government did not and will not. The hon. Gentleman used the term "Falklands folly". That was not a term recognised by his right hon. Friends speaking from the Opposition Front Bench a year or so ago. It was not "Falklands folly"; it was a necessary Falklands rescue operation.
The hon. Gentleman referred to developments in Argentina. I am happy to share his view of those, as is my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. On reflection, I hope that he will give significantly more weight to the Prime Minister's message than he was prepared to do. He suggested that it was an exchange of "Happy Christmas" messages to president Alfonsin on the occasion of his inauguration on 10 December. It went a great deal further than that. It was a manifestation of the wish that we have constantly expressed for a return to a normal, rational relationship with Argentina. That has been the Government's consistent policy. I remind the House of my right hon. Friend's message:
On the occasion of your inauguration I wanted to let you know that, although we have many differences, we can all take pleasure in the restoration of democracy to Argentina, believing it will bring freedom and justice to all your people. Today brings new hope to your country.

Mr. Foulkes: I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister sent that message to President Alfonsin. Does the Minister accept that to encourage the development of democracy in Argentina we need to be seen to be working with that democratic Government in a way in which we were completely and rightly unprepared to work with the junta? To do that, sovereignty must come into the discussions. The Minister, his colleagues and the Prime Minister constantly say that any solution must have the approval and acceptance of the Falklands islanders. I do not dissent from the fact that they must be involved in the solution. With the changed circumstances of democracy in Argentina, and because the Falkland islanders must live


in peace with their near neighbours, what initiatives are the Minister and his colleagues taking to talk to the Falkland islanders to find out what they now think?

Mr. Whitney: The hon. Gentleman cannot sustain the proposition that the development and flourishing of democracy in Argentina is relevant to doing something aginst the democratic wishes of the Falkland islanders. We welcome the elections and their result, as my right hon. Friend made clear to the world. We look forward to the continuing development of democratic institutions in the new Argentina, which has undergone 50 years of troubled constitutional history. However, that matter is essentially for the people of Argentina. We wish them well, but it is their responsibility and concern; it is not directly ours. Our responsibilities and concerns are for the people of this country and its dependencies, which include the people of the Falkland Islands. Our commitment to their future must and will remain, but that does not mean we are not looking for—to borrow a phrase from another context—a dual-track policy.
We must maintain our commitment to the Falkland Islands and at the same time seek a positive development of sensible, normal relations with the new Government of Argentina. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that that is sensible. I am certain that the British people accept it is sensible, as indeed, I am sure the Falkland islanders do. On the other point that the hon. Gentleman made, of course, we continue to keep in close touch with the Falkland islanders about all these important developments. I urge the House to recognise the fact that this was not of our doing. It is not fortress Falklands. It is the minimum response to a situation which was forced upon us. At the same time, we remain fully disposed to developing our relations with Argentina.

Mr. Townsend: Does my hon. Friend appreciate that many Conservative Members welcome the Prime Minister's recent statement, but believe that within the next few weeks the Government must go further and faster? Will he pay particular regard to the possibility of a visit by the relatives of the Argentine dead to the Falkland Islands?

Mr. Whitney: I am certainly happy to endorse the view that there should be a properly organised visit by the relatives of the dead, such as they have been offered. My hon. Friend will recall the activities of one Mr. de Stefanis who soured an earlier prospective visit in which the International Red Cross was involved. We would welcome any renewal of such an initiative.
In conclusion, I repeat that this is a dual-track policy. We also have responsibilities, which we shall not shrink from upholding. I am confident that in maintaining those responsibilities, we shall have the support of the British people.

Passports (Children's Names)

Mr. Tony Favell: In a Christmas Adjournment debate last year, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) drew the attention of the House to a child abduction case involving three small children aged six, four and two, who had been abducted from the United Kingdom by their father. One year later I have the sad task of addressing the House in a Christmas Adjournment debate about a constituent of mine called Barbara Miller. She has not heard or seen anything of her son Ross, aged four, since 12 October this year. He was abducted by his father, Peter Ballance. My constituent does not even know whether Ross is alive or dead. Other parents will sympathise with her desperation, particularly at this time of year, when they are enjoying their children.
I can do no better than repeat the words with which my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge opened his Christmas Adjournment debate last year:
In the course of his duties every hon. Member who takes a personal concern for his constituents as individuals can give testimony to his experience of human unkindness and even cruelty."—[Official Report, 23 December 1982; Vol. 34, c. 1091.]
No words can better express my feelings about the conduct of Ross's father towards my constituent.
Barbara Miller has every reason to suspect that Ross has been removed from the country. His father, who applied some time ago for Jamaican citizenship, is also an experienced flier, having made many trips to France in light aircraft. I have been advised that Ross's name was added to his father's passport in August this year, unbeknown to his mother. Barbara Miller and Peter Ballance are both United Kingdom citizens. Although they lived together for five years, they were not married. When the child was born, his birth was registered by both parents with the surname Ballance. When they parted, Barbara Miller was awarded legal custody of Ross. Mr. Ballance was allowed two days' access per week to the child by the court. He exercised his right of access to the child on 12 October. There has been no trace either of him or the child since that time, despite exhaustive efforts by Barbara Miller's solicitors, the police and the immigration authorities. She is desperate. She prays that as Christmas approaches, the heart of the man who has done this dreadful thing to her will soften. She prays that someone, somewhere, will contact her to let her know at the least whether her son is alive or dead.
I welcome the Child Abduction Bill presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Mr. Wood), which was given a Second Reading last Friday. It seeks to make it a criminal offence to remove a child from the country without the consent of both parents. On a number of occasions child abductions have been debated by the House. It is hoped that the Bill will facilitate the return of a child removed from the jurisdiction.
I am concerned to make it more difficult to abduct a child in the first place. So far as I can see, it can be done only by making it more difficult to obtain a child's passport or to have a child's name added to the passport of either parent. To have a child's name added to a United Kingdom passport, either parent has only to supply to the Passport Office his or her own passport, the birth certificate of the child and the appropriate application form. The written consent of the other parent is not


required. I remember that when my children's names were added to my passport, my wife was astonished that it could be done without her written consent.
The application form states that, in the case of an illegitimate child, consent should be given by the mother, but there is no way of knowing whether the child is illegitimate if the child bears the surname of the father and if the short form of the birth certificate is supplied. It is suspected that that is what happened in the case of Barbara Miller's son Ross. The addition of his name to the father's passport could have been avoided if the long form of birth certificate had been supplied, showing that the parents had different names. However, I do not believe that that reform would go far enough. There are many cases in which the parents are married or even unmarried, and bear the same surname.
To avoid the child's name being added to one parent's passport without the consent of the other, I consider it absolutely vital to amend the form to provide for the written consent of the other parent to be included on the application form and to have the form countersigned by a Member of Parliament, justice of the peace, minister of religion, lawyer or a person of similar standing. That is the case with a full United Kingdom passport application made by yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, or myself.
If one parent is dead, or separated or divorced from the other, a death certificate or court order would have to be produced to support the signature of the sole parent having custody. With regard to a British visitor's passport, which is obtainable from post offices, it should be necessary for both parents to apply unless the death certificate or court order is produced.
The Minister may also wish to consider whether it would be advisable for the child to attend in person. That happens to applicants for passports for citizens of the United States, who are under the age of 18. There, the child must attend in person. Additional protection introduced in the United States in 1979 provided that the children had to have their own passports. That means that if a couple were married and then separated the judge, when awarding custody, could order that the child's passport be surrendered to the parent to whom custody was awarded. Of course, those new arrangements would cause some inconvenience to parents, but in view of the large number of abduction cases that are reported, I have every confidence that they would understand the reason, which is to avoid the heartbreak suffered by my constituent, Barbara Miller, and many others like her this Christmas.
I am grateful for the opportunity to bring this matter to the attention of the House and hope that the Minister can give a positive and helpful reply so that the number of tragedies that cause such suffering to parents who have been deprived of their children in that way can be reduced.

Mr. Timothy Wood: I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Mr. Favell) for allowing me to intervene in this debate. The case that he related is all too familiar. Such child abduction cases occur frequently these days. I have been presented with many similar cases concerning the tragic circumstances of families and children.
I hope that the Bill on child abduction that I have presented will receive the approval of Parliament, but whether or not it becomes law, there is a strong case for modification of the arrangements covering the issue of

passports including children. There is no doubt that, even if the law with regard to child abduction is changed, there will still be cases where children are taken out of the country or where there is a danger of them being taken out of the country before the responsible parent is aware of that fact. If modifications could be made in the arrangements covering passports, I believe that many such cases could be prevented. I hope that the Foreign Office will pursue the matter.

The Under-Secretary IA State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Ray Whitney): I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Stockport (Mr. Favell) and Stevenage (Mr. Wood) for raising an important proposition and the sad and worrying case of Barbara Miller and her son, Ross. I must try to deal with the general principles that my hon. Friends have adumbrated. If my hon. Firend the Member for Stockport has any specific matter that he wishes to take up, no doubt we can pursue it separately by other means.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, who is a distinguished member of the legal profession urges us to go in the direction in which, to quote the old tag, "hard cases make bad law". In striking a balance and coming to a judgment on these issues, we should consider several other factors which were not referred to. The Government are not insensitive to the problem of child abduction which my hon. Friends the Members for Stevenage and for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) have brought to the attention of the House and about which the} have expressed anxiety. I shall deal with the general arrangements operated by the Passport Office and seek to explain their justification, and show some of the serious difficulties that would be involved if we followed the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport.
Hon. Members may be aware that before the Passport Office will add a child's name to a relative's passport, or issue a separate passport to a minor, it requires the written consent of a parent. In the case of an illegitimate child, the mother's consent is required and this is made clear on all passport application forms.
In order to help safeguard against children being taken out of the country against the wishes of a parent or guardian having lawful rights over them, the Passport Office provides for objections against the issue of standard passport facilities to a minor to be lodged with it. This is commonly known as the "caveat system".
This system, which has been in operation for many years, was slightly modified following the coming into force on 8 May 1974 of the Guardianship Act 1973 which gives the father and mother equal rights in relation to the custody and upbringing of a legitimate child. Under current arrangements either parent can give consent to the issue of passport facilities to a legitimate child, although they will not be granted if a prior objection has been lodged by the other parent or a guardian. The mother's consent is required for the issue of passport facilities to an illegitimate child; facilities would not normally be granted on the consent of the father alone where the Passport Office is aware that the child is illegitimate — for example, where a full copy of the child's birth certificate is produced. Where a minor is either married or a member of Her Majesty's Forces no parental or guardian's consent is required.
A parent or guardian can lodge an objection with the Passport Office provided it is based on a court order giving the objector custody of the minor, or giving the objector care and control over the minor, or specifying the objector's consent to the child leaving the country, or supporting the objector's objections to the child having a passport or leaving the country.
However, the mother of an illegitimate child can lodge an objection without it being based on a court order. To lodge an objection, the parent or guardian has simply to write to the Passport Office, giving the full names, places and dates of birth of the child or children concerned and where necessary, to produce the relevant court order.
If the minor already has a valid passport or is included in one at the time that an objection is lodged, the Passport Office does not have any authority to compel the surrender of the passport in order to give effect to the objection. In these circumstances, the Passport Office will note the minor's name in its records for 12 months and if during that time the passport concerned comes into its possession for any reason, or another application for passport facilities is made for the minor, it will give effect to the objection.
Our present impression, based on the large number of people who lodge caveats with the Passport Office, is that these arrangements work well. A notice is printed on appropriate High Court orders advising either parent that he or she may ask the Passport Office not to issue passport facilities to a child without their prior knowledge, and it is my understanding that details of the caveat system appear in several legal works of reference and are generally understood within the legal profession. The system is also well-known to citizens advice bureaux which play such an important part in the life of our country in such delicate and difficult family and emotional areas.

Mr. Fave11: Is the Minister suggesting that every parent who separates from either their husband or wife, or who has an illegitimate child, should immediately register a caution with the Passport Office? If so, surely the Passport Office would grind to a halt.

Mr. Whitney: That is not our experience. The general view of the Passport Office is that the system works well. On the contrary,. there is no question of it grinding to a halt should the rights under the caveat system be exercised. If there is any reason to assume, in a specific circumstance, that such fear is justified, any individual parent would be well advised to operate the caveat system which I have just outlined.
Where the Passport Office has been made aware that a child has been made a ward of court, it will not grant passport facilities without the court's permission. The courts can require the surrender of any passport if they have reason to believe that a parent intends to use it to take a child out of their jurisdiction in contravention of a court order.
My hon. Friend, in speaking of Barbara Miller, has drawn attention to difficulties that can sometimes arise when an application for passport facilities is made on behalf of an illegitimate child.
If the child's status were clearly apparent in every case, it would in theory be simple to administer a rule whereby passport facilities were granted to illegitimate children only with the consent of the mother. In practice, however,

large numbers of illegitimate children are the products of stable or semi-stable unions in which the child's parents live together, the mother adopts and uses the father's surname, and that is the surname by which the child is always known. In other cases, even when the parents no longer live together, the mother and child nevertheless use the father's surname. It follows that in the great majority of cases, the illegitimate child's birth will be registered in the same name as that of his natural father. It has for many years been standard practice for the shortened form of birth certificate to be used as the normal supporting documentation for passport applications; the long birth certificate is a more expensive document, and it would be considerably more troublesome and costly for all applicants to be required to produce a long birth certificate. The shortened birth certificate provides no means, however, from which the Passport Office can deduce that the application relates to an illegitimate child. An application from a Mr. Smith, declaring himself to be the father of a child, John Smith, and supported by a short birth certificate has exactly the same appearance whether the child is legitimate or illegitimate. A long birth certificate, based on a joint registration by mother and father in the same surname, does, by showing that both were informants, indicate illegitimacy.
For the Passport Office to undertake always to secure the consent of the mother, as a means of preventing what happened in the case raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, would entail insisting on the full birth certificate being produced in respect of each child, or requiring all fathers applying for passports without the mother's express consent to produce evidence of the child's legitimacy. Either prospect would be unworkable.
I suggest that, as in many other family cases, it is impossible and unreasonable to expect the Passport Office to take full responsibility for safeguarding an individual's parental rights. If a mother believes that there is a risk of the father abducting the child and taking him abroad, it is for her to warn the Passport Office, as it would be for any mother having custody of her legitimate child, and having similar fears.
Although the present practice of the Passport Office dates from 1966, it has been reviewed in consultation with the Lord Chancellor's Office, the Home Office and the principal registry of the Family Division. After looking carefully at the problem and taking account of the great concern about child abduction cases, they have all concluded that the present practice is justifiable.
I should make it clear that the caveat system does not apply to the British visitor's passport, which is a simplified travel document valid only for short holiday visits to specified countries. It is available over the counter at post offices throughout Great Britain. Without computer links between the Passport Office and the 1,600 or so post offices that issue British visitors' passports, it is impossible for the Post Office to hold and update the list of registered objections to the grant of passport facilities to minors. I am sure that my hon. Friends will understand that the introduction of computers goes much wider than the scope of this debate.
I hope that I have convinced my hon. Friends that we do not wish to be obstructive. We are conscious of the problems that they have raised, but it is important to bear in mind the convenience of the great travelling public to which all passport problems must apply.

Mr. Robert Rhodes James: I am deeply grateful to my hon. Friend. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Mr. Favell) pointed out, the problem came to light and the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Mr. Wood) was prompted by a series of cases in Cambridge. I raised the case of Mrs. Al-Ali and her three children on the Christmas Adjournment last year. I am glad to say that that episode ended happily, with considerable thanks being due to the Foreign Office and the Government.
However, I do not think that the Under-Secretary's reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport's arguments has met the full scale of the problem. It is not simply a question of passports; the Government must assume full responsibility for young people who are citizens of the United Kingdom. I hope that the Government will support the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage, because it is important that the abduction of minors should not only be a criminal offence, but should carry with it the penalty of extradition.
The problem goes much wider than a few individual cases. Therefore, I hope that the Government will support my hon. Friend's Bill and will make any necessary amendments. We are dealing with children who are involved in a vast human tragedy. It is the responsibility of hon. Members and the Government to ensure that protection is given to all our citizens, particularly when they are young and defenceless.

Mr. Whitney: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James). I pay tribute to his work on the serious issues raised by child abduction. It is not for me to speak on behalf of the Government in respect of the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage because that would take us beyond the ambit of the debate. My responsibility today is to consider the possibility of helping over difficulties caused by the issue and control of passports. I do not wish to be unhelpful. I have sought to show that the caveat system offers good safeguards. Obviously, I cannot say that it provides a total safeguard in all cases. It is a matter of striking a balance between the wider convenience—people's rights to easy access to passports and to use short birth certificates when making applications—and the problems caused by the worrying cases of child abduction.
However tight we make passport control, we would still run into problems of child abduction and they cause difficulties that involve the legal systems and sovereignty of other countries.

Mr. Wood: The caveat system may be satisfactory for the Passport Office, but I wonder whether the Foreign Office has investigated child abduction cases to see whether caveats have been submitted in those cases. If not, why not? Does the system seem as satisfactory to parents whose children have been abducted as it does to the Passport Office?
In the light of the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James), I should add that the Home Office has supported my work on the Child Abduction Bill.

Mr. Whitney: I hope that we are not being unjustifiably complacent about the operation of the caveat system. I understand that it is working well and I hope that the debate will give an impetus to spreading news of the system to various agencies, including citizens advice bureaux. Any parent facing a potential danger would be well advised to take advantage of the system.

Mr. Favell: Current figures show that about one marriage in four ends in divorce. If every parent who does not have custody of a child entered a caveat, the burden of the Passport Office would be enormous. Surely it would be easier to change the application form so that both parents apply for the consent in the first place with a countersigning consent signature, as happens when anybody else makes an application.

Mr. Whitney: We shall look at the system again in the light of the points made so effectively by my hon. Friends. I repeat that the pressure that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport mentioned has not been great. There is a much greater danger associated with the introduction of more inconvenience and bureaucracy. Conservative Members especially are committed to avoiding a trend to an increase in bureaucracy.
I should like to stress the principle that puts the onus on parents to protect their rights in regard to their children. If they fear that those rights might be prejudiced, they will have to seek remedy in the courts. Any proposal to tighten existing rules would lead to delays, inconvenience and additional expense for the great majority of applicants when custody is not in dispute. It is a case of judgment and balance. We believe that we have the balance right, but we shall certainly continue to keep it closely under review.

Agriculture and Food Research Council

2 pm

Dr. Jeremy Bray: The Opposition are concerned about the first corporate plan of the Agriculture and Food Research Council and I am speaking as the Opposition spokesman on science and technology. I am taking the first opportunity to raise this matter because, although it has been widely and semipublicly discussed for a long time in the research council, in the agricultural and farming press and among scientists, it was only finally approved by the council about a week ago.
The background to the council's first plan is a Government freeze on support for science in real terms which, combined with cuts in university support, has produced a substantial cut in the effective support of science as it works through the dual support system. University teachers, who are faced with cuts and students who demand to be taught, are trying to maintain standards of teaching, and therefore inevitably divert their effort away from their long-term research preoccupations to maintain those teaching standards. Moreover, equipment grants are reduced and capital expenditure is not directed at research.
Faced with those cuts in the science budget, the reaction of the Advisory Board on the Research Councils has been to examine priorities as between the research councils. It was faced with several priorities. First, if the advisory board does not support and protect pure science, no one else will. Other people can finance applied science and technology, but none can support pure science. It has not been the Agriculture and Food Research Council's job primarily to contribute to pure science. A comparison between the record of the Medical Research Council on molecular biology with that of the Agriculture and Food Research Council is by no means invidious, bearing in mind the entirely different briefs of the two organisations. But the Agriculture and Food Research Council cannot make the same claim on the ABRC and the Department of Education and Science science budget. Had not the primary work on pure scientific research been done by MRC-financed activity on molecular biology, the interesting and powerful work that is now beginning to be done on the applications of molecular biology to plant genetics could never have come about. The ABRC's priority here is entirely understandable.
The second group of considerations were those that were raised in the Mason report, and concern the balance between work in the laboratories and institutes of research councils and in universities, and the balance between work that is financed by the Government and that which is financed by the industry for the benefit of which it is undertaken. Taking those two considerations together, the ABRC's inevitable conclusion was that the cuts should fall on the AFRC. In addition to that external pressure, the AFRC was also facing pressing demands to find resources to finance applied science, which is becoming available for fruitful application in agricultural research, and for the extension of its brief to include food research. The ACARD report on food and the food industry is only one aspect of the pressures to which the AFRC should respond. It deals only in passing with the important issue of diet and

health. In that regard, the Government disgracefully ran away from the James report, which was recently published by the Health Education Council and calls for a national food policy. As we are proceeding at present, the Government are setting the United Kingdom up to be a pilot study of the consequences of a nation not having a food policy. The consequences of that in terms of deaths from cancer and heart disease in mid-life promise to be appalling.
Faced with the demands for fresh work and for the redirection of activity with diminishing resources, the AFRC was in an impossible position. Dr. Riley forthrightly criticised the ABRC's decision. That is entirely understandable. He maintains that the cuts in agricultural research, whatever might have caused them, are not economically or scientifically justifiable.
The considerations that I have outlined are relevant. Within the constraints that I have mentioned we reach an impossibly damaging conclusion for the AFRC. Where, then, does the fault lie? It must lie in the size of the science budget which the Government took as their starting parameter. The magnitude of the cuts are best measured in human terms. In the Agriculture and Food Research Council 800 out of 6,800 jobs are to be removed. That is not just 800 jobs for people with any old background. The people concerned are scientists and technicians who are best equipped to contribute to the development of agriculture and agricultural productivity in Britain. They have made an outstanding contribution to the increase in agriculture's productivity. That is well recognised by farmers and the National Farmers Union. There is every prospect that that record will be improved upon still further.
There is no sign of any lagging in the increase of agriculture's productivity. In those circumstances, it looks as though the Government have given way to rank prejudice. First, there is their prejudice against civil servants. They maintain the idea that work done by Agriculture and Food Research Council staff is inevitably inferior to that done in industry and in the universities. The Government have also given way to the prejudice that cash limits are the ultimate wisdom in economic management and the management of public expenditure, in preference to cost-benefit pay-offs in departmental budgets, where there is need for flexibility to adjust the budget in response to the effectiveness of the results that are achieved.
It is in that direction, and not in the damaging and ungracious human consequences of the Government's decision, that we must pursue the argument. We can convincingly argue — we have done — in terms of economic benefit that is to be derived from maintaining and increasing the agricultural research budget. I advise the scientists and the Agriculture and Food Research Council to seek the leverage of brute political force in persuading the Government to change their mind. I ask the Minister whether the corporate plan is final or whether it is subject to further consultation with the staff, with the industry, with the National Farmers Union and with the Select Committee, which has not even been given the courtesy of a reply to its report before the Government effectively committed themselves to a position on agricultural research, which was so well covered by the Committee in its report. What about consideration by Parliament itself?
In practice, the implementation of the plan is bound to be subject to consultation and. in the process of that


consultation, will inevitably be subject to revision. Will those decisions and the implementation of them be so precipitate as to allow no room for the consultations and the revision of plans which are likely to save the day?
If, in the course of consultation, increased resources are found — not necessarily in 1984–85 but in later years, not necessarily from the science budget but from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and not necessarily from Government but from farmers by means of a levy on the marketing boards or from other sources—to allow the AFRC to increase resources and carry out the programmes to which it has previously been committed and with which it should be able to continue, will it have the establishment, the people, the staff and the continuity of programmes, to use the additional resources that may be forthcoming?
The Letcombe laboatory, for example, is doing useful work on the role of the root system of cereals in relation to the nitrogen cycle. It is only a few weeks ago that the National Farmers Union cereals committee visited Letcombe, expressed its interest in the work that was being undertaken, and asked for a contract research programme to be submitted to it on the topical problem of straw. The NFU is pursuing that and is actively interested. The laboratory has not yet had a reply, yet it is faced with the likelihood or expectation of closure. The staff of the laboratory is convinced that in cost-effectiveness terms, in the scientific quality of its work and in the value of its work to clients, it can justify continuing as a separate, small and efficient laboratory rather than being absorbed into a vast laboratory where, possibly, it would have less direct contact with those whom it serves in agriculture.
Secondly, there is some evidence that research that is diverted to the universities could perfectly well be done in the institutes since it is not of a kind that is genuinely opening up new possibilities, which should be the emphasis of the university-based research. University-based research should be supplementary to the work that is carried out in the institutes rather than a replacement for it.
Thirdly, the proposal to shift the weed research organisation away from arable land in the east of England to Long Ashton near Bristol, away from the arable land and its work on weeds, seems to be rather an extreme decision.
I am not contesting the need for efficiency in the management of research. If we had an expanding science budget, the consequences for change and the efficient management of research resources would be greater and not less. I do not think that there is any question of being able to offer the members of the staff, or the organisation of the research council, the prospect of unchanged and undisturbed conditions and the continuity of everything that has taken place in the past. I do not think that any of the staff want that, anyway. Instead, the staff wants the opportunity in a vigorous and expanding area of research, which serves a vigorous and efficient industry, to carry on with the work that it is doing.
The damage is not limited to the AFRC. The Government have proposed that the transitional cost—not necessarily in 1984–85 but in future years—should be borne by a levy on other research councils, principally the Medical Research Council and the Science and Engineering Research Council. Effectively, the Government are cutting the science budget still further. In universities and nationalised industries, where there are

possible closures, redeployments and redundancy costs, the consequences have been considered legitimate reasons for increasing the cash limits of the organisations and departments concerned.
Why are the research councils and the science budget being discriminated against in this way? If any fellows of the Royal Society supposed that the Prime Minister would be persuaded to reverse the decision made by her Ministers by electing her to the Royal Society, they entirely mistook her psychology. As a child, one of the saws which seem to have impressed her was "family holdback" when the cake was passed round. She has not lifted a finger to help the scientific community.
The Secretary of State has discredited himself in the eyes of his dry colleagues by asking for more for the science budget, and being knocked back by them. I hope that the scientists will persist in pointing out to Ministers the errors of the decisions that they have taken. They can help to sway the arguments in their sphere, and by doing so and by vigorously lobbying Conservative Members, as well as in the scientific community, they can fully establish that they are best able to serve their clients and uphold scientific standards by maintaining the volume of activity to which they were previously committed, taking on, in addition to that, the greater responsibilities that this House should ask them to fulfil.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Peter Brooke): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Motherwell, South (Dr. Bray) for having raised this important subject. It may help if I give a little background before responding to the points that the hon. Gentleman raised. I am conscious that he is making his maiden appearance at the Dispatch Box in his capacity as Opposition spokesman, and I welcome him in that role.
The hon. Gentleman spoke of a prejudice on the part of the Government. The larger part of the science budget is a matter to which we shall probably return on a future occasion. Therefore, it would be inappropriate for me to take the debate too wide today, although I shall say something later about the latter part of his speech, in which he asked me questions about how the Agriculture and Food Research Council's budget might fit in with that of the science budget as a whole.
The Agriculture and Food Research Council's first corporate plan was published on 15 December. Hon. Members will find copies of the plan in the Library. The first plan covers the five years from 1984 to 1988, and it the council's intention that it shall be brought up to date regularly and revised as necessary. I am glad to have this opportunity to commend the council's decision to put together and publish a corporate plan. I am aware of the difficulties that are inherent in any such exercise, and I should like to put on record my appreciation of the courageous way the council has faced them. I have little doubt that all concerned will, in due course, see benefits flowing from this strategic approach, which I would encourage similar bodies to consider adopting.
To respond to the specific question that the hon. Gentleman asked, the corporate plan was drawn up in consultation with all the interests affected — the agriculture departments, the universities and industry. It covers the work commissioned with the council by the agriculture departments, as well as the work done with the grant-in-aid from my Department.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the relationship between the corporate plan and the report of the House of Commons Select Committee on Agriculture. Perhaps, inevitably, the work on the plan was already well in hand when the report appeared, and the financial situation facing the council and its institutes in 1984–85 was such that any delay in dealing with it could have amounted to irresponsibility. In fact, a number of the report's recommendations are reflected in the plan — for instance, more funding for food research, and better support for the universities. Further work is required on the Government's reply to the Select Committee on Agriculture's report, but a response will be made in the spring.
The council decided to draw up the plan because of the urgent need to meet new scientific challenges, success in which will pave the way for the growth of entirely new technologies. It was also necessary, because finance was expected to be limited, to ensure that every pound would be spent effectively. An important purpose of the plan is to enable the AFRC to improve its cost effectiveness. Another is to enable the industries concerned to understand better what the service is doing and to give informed advice on directions for the future.
The plan sets out in some detail the current research programme of the Agriculture and Food Research Council, and identifies the scientific opportunities in each area of research. It also sets out quite explicitly those areas of research that are regarded as being under-supported in terms of the future needs and opportunities to which I have referred, as well as those which are roughly in balance, or which are at present over-supported.
Not surprisingly, research into food science and technology is identified as an under-supported area. Attention was drawn to the need to expand research into food last year, when the Advisory Committee for Applied Research and Development published the report to which the hon. Gentleman has referred. The plan provides for a substantial switch of effort, within a reduced budget, towards research underpinning the food processing industry.
Under the plan, funds devoted to food science will grow by about 26 per cent., so as to represent about 13 per cent. of the council's total expenditure. For this to happen, there will need to be a reduction of about 10 per cent. in support for both plant science and animal science. The plan assumes that, overall, the council's budget will fall in real terms by some 7 per cent. by 1988—mainly due to the expected reductions in funding from the science budget, about which I shall say more a little later. Other areas of science research which will benefit under the plan include plant biochemistry, molecular biology and biotechnology. There will also be more provision for research grants to universities and colleges.
These important changes cannot be achieved painlessly. Though the methods for achieving change which are outlined in the plan include improving operational efficiency in institutes and by linking related programmes, a number of specific programme reductions have been identified and will be implemented. I do not intend to go into detail about these now, because they are in the plan. Some major organisational changes will result, however, including the amalgamation of the Letcombe laboratory with Rothamsted experimental station — with the

Letcombe premises eventually being relinquished—and the consolidation of the current work of the weed research organisation at Long Ashton research station, to which the hon. Gentleman referred.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) sought leave to raise the issue of Letcombe during our deliberations on the Consolidated Fund. As a result of his initiative, he and I, and Dr. Riley and the head of Letcombe are to sit down together.
In achieving these and other organisational changes, the council intends to make the maximum use of natural wastage and limited recruitment. About 300 posts might be lost this way, according to the plan. The fundamental nature of the changes in prospect makes it likely, however, that as many as 500 further posts—the hon. Gentleman referred to 800—will be lost over the period of the plan. There will inevitably be a need to resort to compulsory redundancy in some cases, though premature retirement and voluntary redundancy will be used wherever possible.
I assure hon. Members that the council and its institutes' directors carry out full and proper consultation—a matter raised by the hon. Gentleman—with unions at all levels where redundancies or redeployments are in prospect, and that they intend to proceed in ways which avoid, where possible, hardship to individuals. I understand that, where posts which are to be lost next year have been identified, discussions are already in process with the staff involved. It is too early to say, as yet, what the total cost to the council of the planned organisational changes will be. There will obviously be some capital costs where programmes are merged or transferred, but the largest element will inevitably be the redundancy lump sum and continuing compensation payments.
Hon. Members may recall that in 1982, for the first time, the Advisory Board for the Research Councils—the ABRC—published the advice it had offered to my right hon. Friend on the allocation of the science budget under the title, "The Science Budget: A Forward Look 1982". The ABRC's advice spoke of the responsibility of all the research councils to decide whether existing activities should be abandoned or curtailed to permit new and specially promising work to be undertaken, recognising that such reassessment presents greater difficulty where the research is carried out in a number of institutes of long standing where there is a greater possibility that the pattern of organisation can unduly dictate scientific priorities.
The report said:
We place great emphasis on the importance of flexibility, while recognising that redeployment of resources in research calls no less than in other areas for long-term planning and sensitivity of management. We welcome the steps that have already been taken by the Councils but must express some concern that, even now, new activities to which the Councils and we accord high priority are having difficulty in finding a place within the Councils' programmes because of commitments to existing areas of work.
The ABRC went on the recognise that restructuring often involved early retirement, or even redundancies, and hence additional spending in the short term, and said that it intended to consider with the councils whether special arrangements, such as the establishment of a central fund, needed to be made.
This need for flexibility and the importance of redeploying resources to new and promising areas of science has been reiterated by the board in the advice that


it has given to my right hon. Friend this year. This has been a year of particular pressures on the research councils. I have already described the AFRC's situation. Fluctuations in the exchange rate and changes in national GNPs have increased the cost of international subscriptions paid in particular by the Science and Engineering Research Council, while the Natural Environment Research Council has in recent years suffered a considerable loss of income through a fall in the amount of research commissioned with it by Government Departments.
In its advice to my right hon. Friend, the ABRC gave high priority to the provision of additional funds to help with the restructuring costs involved if the AFRC were to implement its plan and if the NERC were to cope within lower levels of funding. The board also recognised the inescapable obligation faced particularly by the SERC to pay its international subscriptions, and pressed for additional funds to be provided to help SERC with its problems in this area.
My right hon. Friend considered carefully the representations made to him by the advisory board for increased funding for these two key purposes. He agreed with the advisory board about the importance of flexibility so that the councils could respond positively and quickly to new scientific challenges. He accepted that the creation of that flexibility would inevitably involve major redeployment of resources within both AFRC and NERC and that such redeployment would involve restructuring costs in a variety of forms, such as costs of early retirement, transfer costs and capital work where it made sense to concentrate work at certain centres in order to close other centres.
Having regard to the overriding need of the Government to contain public expenditure, the Government in the event decided that, while they would be able to assist SERC with additional funds to help with the increased cost of international subscriptions, they were able to make only a modest increase to the science budget to help with the costs of restructuring. The additional sums for the latter purpose were £750,000 in 1984–85 and £900,000 in each of the next two years.
That is the background against which the advisory board made its final recommendations to my right hon. Friend about the distribution of the science budget for 1984–85. The board recognises that all councils keep under review their organisation and practice and would normally be expected to fund changes through prudent management of their budgets. But equally it recognises that major changes, such as those being exanined by both AFRC and NERC, would require special support from the board; that other councils might be expected from time to time to face opportunities or difficulties that could not be met within their own resources, however flexibly they were managed; and that the board needed to be in a position to recommend ways of handling major problems of this kind that did not put the overall development of scientific research at risk or call automatically for the provision of extra money.
The board has therefore recommended to my right hon. Friend that, in general, money for reorganisation and development should, where necessary, be set aside from within the science budget. Provisional allocations of the science budget had been made in 1982 as far ahead as 1985–86, and were included in the board's published 1982 advice. Those provisional allocations took no account of

the need that I have described, which was fully perceived during 1983. Thus, in framing its 1983 advice, the board has revised its forward projections, albeit within a broadly level science budget, after allowing for the increased provision for international subscriptions. In one serse, therefore, the hon. Member for Motherwell, South has a point when he speaks of taking money from other research councils to provide money for the AFRC and the NERC. In another sense, however, the sums being contributed by the two donor councils come from their planning figures rather than from firm allocations.
The board has proposed that in 1985–86 and 1986–87, for which years the allocations still remain provisional, the MRC and SERC should make "contributions" of 0·75 per cent. and 1·5 per cent. of their planning figures respectively. That produces £3·1 million in 1985–86 and £6·3 million in 1986–87. Together with the extra £900,000 in each year, to which I have referred, the total available for restructuring becomes £4 million and £7·2 million. The board has proposed that those resources should be allocated to the AFRC and the NERC in response to detailed proposals in their future forward look submissions. No diversion of resources is proposed in 1984–85—as I told the hon. Gentleman in a written answer this week—but the additional £750,000 will enable the AFRC and the NERC to make a start on their most immediate restructuring plans. I emphasise that that scheme received unanimous support from the board, the membership of which includes the head of each of the research councils.
My right hon. Friend has now announced the allocations of the science budget for 1984–85 to the research councils and other research bodies. I am glad of this opportunity to tell the House that it has been possible to secure an additional £1 million in 1984–85 further to assist the SERC with international subscriptions. The total of the science budget is thereby increased to £550 million and the allocation to the SERC will be increased to £278·8 million.
My right hon. Friend has also accepted the provisional advice of the advisory board about the distribution of the budget in 1985–86 and 1986–87. I stress, however, that, just as the Government review public expenditure each year, so the advisory board will look again at its provisional recommendations in the light of the total resources available in the science budget for 1985–86 and 1986–87.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Motherwell, South for providing the House with an opportunity to debate the important question of managing changes needed to meet new scientific opportunities. It is regrettably seldom that the House has a chance to debate science in any form, and the work of the research councils does not therefore receive the public recognition that is its due.
I stress the importance that the Government attach to the funding of scientific research in all its forms. We have managed in recent difficult years to maintain the level of the science budget, and this year we have managed to increase it, although not by as much as we or the advisory board would have wished. The 'work done by the research councils and universities in scientific research is of fundamental importance to us all because it provides the scientific base on which our industry and technology, and hence our future prosperity, rest.

Deen City Farm, Mitcham

Mrs. Angela Rumbold: I remind the House of the start of the community programme and its objectives. In an answer to a parliamentary question from my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) earlier this year, my hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment said:
The community programme was started in October 1982 to provide employment opportunities for the long-term unemployed, largely on a part-time basis. By the end of October 1983, 106,000 places had been filled. This represents a considerable achievement on the part of the Manpower Services Commission and all concerned. Places have been filled rather faster than budgeted and, subject to parliamentary approval, I am making available an additional £10 million for this financial year to cover costs above the original estimate. The Commission will be carefully controlling the filling of places in the remainder of this financial year so as to remain within the revised cash limits.
My right hon. Friend continued:
I am also able to announce that in the light of the progress made, and the evident value of the community programme, I am asking the Manpower Services Commission to run the programme for a further two years from October 1984 on the basis of 130,000 filled places for the long-term unemployed, and that financial provision will be made accordingly."—[Official Report, 16 November 1983; Vol 48, c. 482.]
The subsequent problem was that the marketing of that scheme in the "unemployed" world took some time to get off the ground so that, although only 106,000 places were filled in October 1983, by the end of this November, when it was discovered that the money set aside within the Manpower Services Commission for the programmes was over-committed, the number of firm placements had risen considerably.
About 920 placements were received in the south-west London area, where my constituency lies. The limit allowed by the Manpower Services Commission following the shortfall in cash was 718 placements. Even if the cash flow resumes, as expected, in April 1984, there are likely to be sufficient funds for only 850 people.
Deen city farm receives its funding primarily from two sources. The Manpower Services Commission funds the employment of three key adult workers to oversee the running of the farm, and under the youth training scheme young school leavers are engaged on training primarily on constructing outbuildings, carpentry work and some animal husbandry. Both girls and boys are engaged on that work. The community programme money is intended to supplement and enhance the work of this extremely valuable venture by providing transport to enhance the school liaison work, the running of a charity shop, which is becoming extremely successful, and the setting out of a butterfly park.
It may help the House to know that the farm is situated on allotment land close to a substantial local authority housing estate, where a number of young people in particular do not during their ordinary lives have ready access to work with or to see the type of animals that are kept on the farm. The farm began as a voluntary project about five years ago. Due to the considerable amount of devoted care by the people involved in it, it has developed into a worthwhile asset for the surrounding community, providing work for the young and now for the older unemployed. It is of irreplaceable educational value for the community at large, and I am, therefore, seeking the support of the Minister to prevent the disaster that might

ensue if we cannot overcome the abrupt cut-off of money on 10 February 1984. This abrupt cut-off of money is hanging over the Deen city farm project because it appears that Manpower Services Commission funds run out on that date.
Everyone knows that there are other revenue sources. Cutting the money could create a number of problems. Currently there are about 300 animals on the farm whose safety is ensured by the employment of a night watchman. Two years ago there was an unfortunate incident of vandalism when many of the animals were mutilated and some were killed. Therefore, the employment of a night watchman is essential and is a key to safeguarding the project.
The continued employment of the other two key workers is in question. Both of them have spent a considerable amount of time and effort and they have been on a number of courses at public expense to enrich and enhance their experience and their knowledge of animal husbandry. The prospect of expanding the farm could be lost.
That aspect raises a further problem because if any of those three key workers—who are employed on an annual basis, with renewable contracts on 1 January—has a break in his or her continued employment, it may mean that those three workers, each of whom is exceedingly experienced in work on the farm, will be unemployed, and that would prevent them from being reemployed within 12 months. Therefore, the experience of those workers would be lost to this project, and any new people who were employed in their place would need considerable time in which to gain the knowledge and expertise that they are providing for the farm.
By about 10 February, when the cut is likely to occur, a number of the animals, including pigs, sheep and goats, will be producing young. A small number of pedigree pigs will farrow at that time. With the key workers' jobs in danger, the lives of the animals that are about to farrow will be put at risk as farrowing pedigree pigs, without the benefit of expert help, is a dangerous and difficult exercise. There is thus also a risk that those animals will not survive.
Capital items purchased for the community programme include a minibus, farm shop equipment, a concrete mixer and a typewriter. At present it is expected that the MSC will have to reclaim those items and sell them at a loss, only to repurchase the same items at current prices if the programme is resumed in April. That would be highly wasteful.
The sum required to ensure the continuation of the project is about £21,000. I in no way suggest that it is a small sum, but I believe that with a certain margin of ingenuity and flexibility on the part of the people who consider resources a solution could be found. I realise that my hon. Friend would have to suggest this to the MSC, as it is not entirely within his remit to tell the MSC how to spend its money. I hope that the Department will stress to the MSC that the sharp withdrawal of community programme money in the early spring could jeopardise the project to such an extent that not only would the farm, which is a worthwhile asset for the London borough of Merton, need funds to restart its work but a number of people would have to be retrained and animals lost would have to be repurchased.
The people involved have worked for five years to establish, initially as an entirely voluntary project, a


worthwhile and exciting venture not just for young people in London but for the socially deprived and especially the handicapped. I put it to the Minister sincerely that the project is well worth consideration. I hope that he will do all that he can to assist it to continue without interruption in the interests both of good housekeeping and of humanity and common sense.

The Minister of State, Department of Employment (Mr. John Selwyn Gummer): First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Mrs. Rumbold) for raising this matter. I am sure that the House is pleased that today's timetable has been used in this way, as these arrangements are devised precisely for this purpose so that important matters of constituency interest can be raised and the House can consider specific examples of real problems and appreciate the effects of general programmes on particular communities.
My hon. Friend has done the House a great service in setting out so clearly the position of Deen city farm. The Government feel that the project is a most valuable contribution to the community in which it is situated and we congratulate those who started it and continued if for some years without any help from the community programme. Anything that I have to say is said against a background of great support for an imaginative scheme, which we were very pleased to see take part in the community programme. My hon. Friend will agree that it would be a great sadness if the community programme, which is meant to encourage and aid the provision of help in such areas, should become a means of destroying that which has been created. It is in that spirit I am sure that my hon. Friend has proposed this subject for debate.
However, the community programme is meant to provide funds for only a year. That is the basis on which funding was requested, and that is the basis on which funding was granted. A problem can arise when people envisage, or embark on, a continuous programme on the basis of temporary funding. Perhaps it is wrong to refer to a sharp cut-off in February. All that will happen in February is that the period for which the community programme was agreed will come to an end. It is true that there is provision for an extension for a further year or more, but the idea of the community programme is to provide a means whereby various schemes may be started, and other schemes expanded, to give an opportunity to those who have been unemployed for long periods. The purpose is to prime and encourage voluntary organisations, statutory bodies and other groups which are prepared to help in this partnership in order to provide opportunities for people who have found it difficult to find jobs.
The programme is based upon a clear agreement about the length of time. In this case, the project had specific purposes, including building a raised garden for the disabled, operating an arts and crafts shop, liaising with and providing transport for local schools visiting the farm, and constructing a pond and piggery. Previously, stables were built under the youth opportunities programme, but the care and tending of the animals, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, is not part of the project approved by the MSC.
Here is an excellent enterprise which was fully in existence before the community programme entered the scene. A community programme project was set up, which

the Government were pleased to welcome. Because of the aid from the community programme it has been possible to extend the enterprise. The programme was also almost incidentally valuable in ensuring the provision of the night-time guardianship which protects the animals from vandals, although it was not the purpose of the community programme to provide that guardianship.
The House is aware of the reasons why the Government have had to cut back on the automatic, semi-automatic or presumed extension of present schemes. Our reasons are twofold and are connected with success of the programme. First, the community programme has proved to be more successful in its take-up than anyone could have expected. Whenever one organises a programme of this size and complexity, one has to imagine that some of the places promised and some of the opportunities offered will not materialise. One assumes that not every place will be taken up nor every sponsor able to provide what he has contracted to provide. In order to ensure that we have the number of places that we want, we have to aim above that number, making an estimate of what proportion we are likely to get. The House is well aware that there was a much more successful take-up than on other schemes. That was bound to embarrass us. There was also a problem in certain parts of the scheme.
What I am about to say will probably be taken amiss by some but I must say it. Many people, including members of the GLC, did a great deal to discourage the community programme. They sought to use party political reasons to try to remove the opportunities that the community programme was to provide for those who were unemployed. I deeply deplore the way in which people in jobs, and able to make ends meet, should use their party political prejudices to remove opportunities from others. That was the action taken by the extreme Left-wing element within the GLC and other organisations The result was, as my hon. Friend said, that it took a marketing exercise to bring the scheme to the notice of those people in whose interests the community programme was produced before we received responses and sponsors.
The result of that marketing exercise was that, instead of responses coming in the way that they should in arty sensible society not plagued by Left-wing extremists—generally and gradually over the development of the scheme—it took some time to get the word across. I know that my hon. Friend took a major part in ensuring that people in her area were not misled by the propaganda put out by those opposed to the community scheme. She and many others were successful. Everyone of good will, of all political parties and interests, particularly voluntary organisations and churches, are enthusiastic about the community programme. However, the schemes came through in a rush and people signed on in a rush. We moved suddenly from not having enough places or people to take them up to having all the places that we had sought and a great deal of pressure upon those places from people who wanted to go on to the community programme. That was why we had to have a moratorium and hold up the expansion that we had hoped to continue.
The Government have shown their interest and support for the programme by extending its life, as my right lion. Friend's announcement made perfectly clear. We have also said that we shall make an extra £10 million available., subject to parliamentary approval, to cover costs in this financial year. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that the Government have shown themselves alive to the


possibilities of this remarkable and extremely enterprising scheme. The scheme's success is the reason for some of our difficulties. The Government have said that they will provide more resources this year and have committed themselves to the scheme for a further two years.
The scheme will run until at least October 1986. I cannot say to my hon. Friend that we shall make an exception for this programme in February 1984. She will understand that were I to do so, I would be throwing into doubt the whole mechanism that we have had to introduce to ensure that we keep within the cash limits that we have set out for the programme.
We have no direct responsibility for the many animals that my hon. Friend mentioned. It seems to be a very fecund farm, as most of the animals appear either to be pregnant or recently to have given birth. As a Minister in the Department of Employment I did not expect to be discussing the arrival of pedigree piglets in Mitcham and Morden. It is not the place that I would think of first for such an event. However, that underlines the importance of the project. Without it the area would not have a direct opportunity to see what happens in agriculture. The chance to do so is particularly valuable to the young. Representing an agricultural constituency, I consider it most important that those who live in our big cities and their suburbs should understand what goes on in the countryside. That is good for them and for those of us who represent the special needs of those areas. I thank my hon. Friend for underlining the importance of the issue.
I cannot give my hon. Friend the direct assurance that she would like. However, I shall ask my officials to investigate fully to see whether there is a way to help. There may be methods, perhaps not as directly under the community programme as one might hope, to meet those needs. I shall do all that I can to ensure that the real issue that my hon. Friend raised is met in the best way possible. Once I have completed those investigations, I shall write to her, and I hope that I shall be able to provide her with something with which she will be pleased. However, I cannot promise that at the moment, as I must complete the discussions and see what else can be done.
I should like to refer to a general matter that arises out of the specific case that my hon. Friend raised. The Government are most concerned to reduce unemployment. That is why our economic policy is based on the principle of getting Britain's industry and commerce into a

condition that makes it possible for us to compete and to earn our way in the world, to pay the wages and provide the jobs, which alone comes from producing goods and services that people are prepared to pay for.
Therefore, our first priority must be to create a society that is capable of producing that wealth. That means that any increase in taxation or the use of profits and personal disposable income for purposes other than the creation of wealth, makes it more difficult to produce real and continuing jobs. My hon. Friend knows as well as I do that that balance is difficult to strike. Therefore, it is not possible to have a policy that makes the community programme open-ended and able to use every penny that is around.
The Government must also try to provide help for the unemployed, for example through the imaginative and exciting youth training scheme, which was opposed, attacked and held up by the loony Left throughout the country. Such schemes enable us to do something for those who otherwise cannot be helped directly with proper jobs. The community programme is another of those schemes. I hope that my hon. Friend will help me to ensure that the community programme does not become a crutch upon which schemes that otherwise would have operated successfully under voluntary support depend, so that when the crutch is taken away at the end of the programme the whole thing collapses.
I appreciate that there are special reasons for concern in this case. I do not suggest that the general references relate to the case raised by my hon. Friend. I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree that it is difficult to envisage an extension and continuation of the community programme if it appeared to be being used, although as a temporary system, for the permanent expansion of voluntary and other ideas. If this form of discussion must take place at the end of every community programme scheme, the Government will face difficulties in using their money in this way and in getting taxpayers to continue to fund them.
In promising my hon. Friend that I shall make every effort to find a way to meet her needs—I have every sympathy with the case that she brought before the House—I hope that I can use this opportunity to warn that we must not use the scheme in such a way that it is more difficult to provide opportunities such as have been provided at Deen city farm in other areas of the country which may also need them.

Sri Lanka (Human Rights)

3 pm

Mr. Dave Nellist: This is the last debate of 1983 and it is appropriate that, in the spirit of internationalism, we should examine the sufferings of working people on the opposite side of the globe. I raise this subject not as a moral question, but from the practical standpoint that in whatever country working people live the international trade union and labour movement forms a chain, and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If there is a weakness in the chain promoted by foreign Governments and aided by the Tory Government in this country, it is to the benefit of working people in Britain and elsewhere that we should seek to aid the workers concerned.
Some time ago, the President of Sri Lanka issued a statement saying:
Let the robber barons come".
That was an open invitation to multinationals, which stalk the world in their search for cheap labour, to come into Sri Lanka and use the cheap labour in that country to make their profits. Against that general background, a debate on the international problems of workers is not merely a seasonal gesture, but a practical necessity for workers in this and other countries.
On 25 July at 6 o'clock in the morning, I initiated a debate to try to alert the House to conditions facing the Tamils of Sri Lanka. I wish to refer to two replies given by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. He described Sri Lanka as a
democracy which is to be much admired and which is a jewel in the crown of the countries with which we have been associated for so long.
The Minister denied that there was any form of dictatorship in that country. He said:
There is a thriving democracy, which has a serious problem with its minority. Therefore, it needs understanding, cooperation and help from us, and that is what it will receive, on the basis of our long-standing relationship with the people and successive Governments of Sri Lanka."—[Official Report, 25 July 1983; Vol. 46, c. 988–91.]
I regard that reply as complacent, but it has been heard more than my original speech. The reason is that the two Conservative Members who spoke in the debate enjoyed the favour of the Ministry of State in the Government of Sri Lanka. Their speeches, reprinted in a pamphlet with Big Ben on its front were purported to be the view of the House of Commons. Anyone who has seen Sri Lankan publications would realise that the pamphlet probably cost several hundreds if not thousands of pounds to print. The pamphlet has circulated throughout the world. My information, which came through the United Nations, organisations in Geneva and others which have received copies, is that the pamphlet purports to represent the view of the whole House of Commons, although it refers only to the views about Sri Lanka of the Conservative Minister and his hon. Friends.
Today's debate is necessary to redress that imbalance. Anything purporting to be a House of Commons view should include all opinions — not only Conservative views. That may be a matter which, at a later date, you, Mr. Speaker, might consider.
The hopes and optimism expressed by the Under-Secretary in July have not been justified. About 2,000 people died in Sri Lanka in the terrible month of July, yet the British Government continue to give aid and military

training to the Sri Lankan police and the army. They are stepping up and have so far completed 80 per cent. of a grant of £113 million towards the Victoria dam.
But what aid has the Under-Secretary authorised to be given to the refugees who suffered so much in July? Tens of thousands of people were displaced by the riots. It is one thing to bolster the economy of a Government who caused the problems, but it would be another if the Under-Secretary announced that he would give aid to the people who have suffered in Sri Lanka.
Giving economic aid to the Government of Sri Lanka, who, as I hope to make clear, were among the main organisers of the events of July and thereafter, is art attack on the human and democratic rights of people in that country and it misrepresents the feelings of working people in this country.
It may seem that charging the president and Government of another country with having been involved in riots goes beyond our powers, but on 28 July, within hours of the debate in the House, the president of Sri Lanka broadcast to the nation and expressed not a word of regret or sympathy for the Tamil-speaking people who had been massacred or made homeless. Instead, the President, who was held up by Conservative Members who spoke in the previous debate as a democratic statesman, announced:
the time has come to accede to the clamour and the national respect of the Sinhala people.
Ministers in the President's Government took him at his word. The Industry Minister, Cyril Mathew, led groups of UNP supporters in attacks on Tamil-speaking people in July, and Government vehicles were used to ferry gangs of thugs around the island. Electoral lists, supplied from within the Government, were used to distinguish the houses of Tamils from those of Sinhala-speaking people.
Given what the Minister of State, Department of Employment said in the previous debate today about: those on the Left, perhaps the Government might regard my information as suspect. However, there is information from a newspaper whose editor and editorial staff are not miles distant from the stance of the Tory party. The Times reported on 30 November:
Businessmen, civil servants and ordinary people have gone through race riots before; but last July's killings and lootings were so premeditated, with the military and police play ing an active role, that nothing can allay their fears.
I suppose that Sri Lanka's Industry Minister would not be far distant from the aid that Britain is giving to the Sri Lankan Government. He has written pamphlets which, by the tone of their contents, have encouraged attacks on Tamil people. The Guardian reported in September that a pamphlet called "The Diabolical Conspiracy" —edited parliamentary speeches by Mr. Mathew—was
 a pale counterpart, but nevertheless reminiscent, of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Those are the documents that were used by the Nazis in the 1920s and 1930s to justify their pogroms and the beginnings of their form of fascism.
Other examples in The Guardian article mention attacks on Tamil teachers and interference with the marking of examination papers. The Industry Minister supported the attacks that took place in July.
Despite the clear involvement of Government officers, supporters and Ministers and the use of Government vehicles and publications, the President of Sri Lanka has used the Left parties as a scapegoat for what happened in July. Two parties remain banned—the NSSP, the New Socialist party of Sri Lanka, and the JVP, the People's


Liberation Front. Those parties have been banned. Emergency powers were introduced six months ago. The regulations provide:
Where the President is of opinion with respect to any organisation that there is a danger of action by, or of utilisation of, the organization or its members or adherents — (a) for purposes prejudicial to national security, the maintenance of public order or the maintenance of essential services; … the President may, by Order published in the Gazette, declare that organization to be a proscribed organization.
If those emergency powers were to be implemented fairly, the UNP supporters and the army who carried out the attacks in July should have been proscribed. The regulations also provide power to detain suspects for up to 18 months without charge. Moreover, if there are fatalities as a result of security service actions the regulations provide that inquests to establish the cause of death do not have to be held.
Nevertheless, it is the leaders of Socialist and other parties in Sri Lanka who are being blamed for recent events. Their headquarters, press and literature have been seized. They have also been banned from political activity. The leader of the NSSP, Vasudeva, is a former member of the Sri Lanka Parliament and was a candidate in the recent presidential election. He is being hunted and there is a bounty of £1,400 on his head. That might not seem a large sum to us but it is considerable in Sri Lanka.
The slanderous irony of the charges made against the NSSP and its leader is, in fact, that that party has consistently argued against tactics such as individual terrorism. It has supported the struggles of the Tamil-speaking peoples of Sri Lanka and favours the right of self-determination and, if it is desired, a separate state for those people. The NSSP is also well known in Sri Lanka for attempting to forge unity between Sinhala and Tamil speaking peoples. It is a Socialist party. In places of work it has fought for the unity of working people regardless of political affiliation, race or creed. Nevertheless it is banned.
I should like the Minister to contrast that with the constitution which was established in 1978 which promises:
Every citizen is entitled to: (a) the freedom of speech and expression, including publication; (b) the freedom of peaceful assembly; (c) the freedom of association; (d) the freedom to form and join a trade union:
My charge is that such conditions do not exist in Sri Lanka and yet the British Government hold it up as a model of parliamentary democracy and extend to it the hand of parliamentary and economic friendship. The fact remains that hundreds of people are being detained. Thousands died in July and hundreds of thousands are denied the right to join the political or industrial organisations of their choice.
Seven years ago we ratified a United Nations convention to which Sri Lanka is a signatory. It is an international covenant on civil and political rights. It says that people who have been arrested or detained are entitled to certain rights. It says that such people should be informed promptly in detail and in a language which they can understand of the nature and cause of the charges which are held against them and be allowed adequate time and facilities for the preparation of a defence, and be tried without undue delay.
I have a list, which was completed on 13 December, of 172 people in Batticaloa and Trincomalee who were

arrested as long ago as August and September. They have been detained but have not yet been charged or allowed access to facilities that will enable them to prepare a defence such as the United Nations document mentions. Several of those people are named and their date of arrest is specified. They are being detained without charges. The Sri Lankan Government argue that many of them supported terrorism or violence. Surely our embassy, the Minister or another representative of the British Government could, if they were really worried about human democratic rights in other countries, tell the Sri Lankan Government to which we are giving £100 million in aid, that, if what they say is true, those who are guilty should be charged and put on trial before a jury and that those against whom charges cannot be levelled should be released. There is no justification for months of detention if evidence does not exist on which people can be brought to trial. I charge Sri Lanka, that recipient of Government aid, with abrogating its right to be called a democratic country when such procedures are allowed to continue.
There are political parties that are against exploitation, poverty and the oppression of human rights that exist within Sri Lanka. The New Socialist party is one example. Is the Minister saying that the arguments of parties that have been banned in Sri Lanka, which argue the case for Socialism and unity among people of different languages and cultures, constitute acts which, according to the regulations, are prejudicial to national security? If that is so, I do not agree that Sri Lanka can be considered to be a fully democratic country.
In debates during the year it has been recognised—many of us would say belatedly — that there are countries where people disappear, where people are detained and where dictatorship is beginning to develop. Argentina would be a prime example. Some of us have campaigned since the emergence of that military dictatorship in 1976 against the abrogation of rights in that country. The Government have admitted in recent months — I would argue, for their own purposes — that dictatorship exists in Argentina. Parallels can be seen in outline in Sri Lanka, where there are detentions, disappearances and the banning of political organisations.
Is the Minister more concerned, perhaps, with the use of Sri Lanka as a military and naval base for Britain and America in future, especially ports such as Trincomalee? Is that what is behind the fact that the aid continues to be given? Is it for that consideration that the suffering of the people of Sri Lanka is being swept under the carpet? The Government should end the military and political aid that they give to Sri Lanka. They should press for the restoration of the rights of people to organise in political parties and effective trade unions. They should press for the release of political prisoners.
I shall finish as I began. The purpose of the debate is, first, to hold out a torch of hope to people thousands of miles away. Britain is linked economically with them and they should know that working people in Britain are not unmindful of the problems that they are facing. Another purpose of the debate is to bring to the attention of working people how Governments operate with no regard for those whom they represent. Despite the fig leaves of phrases that we might hear during television interviews in respect of human and democratic rights, they give priority to the economy, to profits and to the strategic use of islands around the globe and not to the rights of ordinary working people.
Britain has an international history over a number of centuries of promoting divisions between ordinary people. It has done so in India, Africa and many other countries. That former direct military domination has been replaced with economic domination, and an example is the support that is given to Government of the sort who prevail in Sri Lanka. As the economies of so-called backward countries, so-called Third world countries, suffer from the recession that is afflicting the industrial capitalist countries of the West, the divisions will be exacerbated. Against that background, the support that the Government give to these divisions is reprehensible. This year, 1983, has another significance, for it is the 100th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, whose most famous quote over that century was perhaps:
Workers of the world unite!
On behalf of the working people whom I represent I offer through this debate the hand of solidarity and of working-class friendship to workers in Sri Lanka who are suffering under the Government of President Jayawardene.

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Ray Whitney): The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) has offered us in this final debate of 1983—a year which has rather more significance than the anniversary of the birth of his patron saint; for example, there is the quatercentenary of Martin Luther, which is somewhat more significant than the anniversary of Karl Marx—a replay of the knockabout that we had at 6 o'clock in the morning on 26 July. Like the Bourbons, he has learnt nothing. Again, we have been offered his slant-eyed Marxist-Leninist view, coming from his ideological straitjacket, which ends up with a perspective of the world that none of us recognises. He is oblivious to many of the vital facts about Sri Lanka and this country's contacts and relations with it and its people, and—this is what I cannot understand—that seems to lead him to a partial view of the ethnic communities in Sri Lanka.
The hon. Member shows a deep concern for oppression and violence against the Tamil minorities in Sri Lanka. I share his concern. I am concerned about violence against and oppression of any other citizen of Sri Lanka. I ask the hon. Gentleman to widen his perspective a little—indeed, rather more than a little—because the British Government have consistently made clear to the Sri Lankan Government our concern about the observation of human rights, and the Sri Lankan Government have recognised our concern.
When we last debated this subject in July, I deplored any resort to violence. I recognised the deep-seated problems of the Tamil community, which have existed for many years, as anyone who has any knowledge of Sri Lanka will acknowledge. With respect, I question whether the hon. Gentleman's familiarity with Sri Lanka is very deep. He seems merely to use his view of Sri Lanka as a case study for Marxist-Leninism today, overseas model. Those of us who know about Sri Lanka accept the serious problem that exists there. We recognise, too, that important efforts have been made since the quite lamentable events of the high summer to restore the situation. Efforts have been made not only by the communities themselves but by the Indian Government, who made an important contribution. I shall return to that matter in a moment.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the actions taken by the British Government. He called for aid. It may have escaped his notice that we responded with immediate emergency aid. We immediately donated £50,000 to the Red Cross, in response to an appeal from the League of Red Cross Societies, and a further £30,000 to Oxfam for humanitarian aid for the victims of the riots. We are convinced that those efforts, together with those made by Sri Lanka's many other overseas friends, were much appreciated by the Sri Lankan Government, who themselves gave relief and welfare assistance to the unfortunate victims of the violence.
Since then, the problem has been to restore harmony between the communities and in the political society of Sri Lanka. None of us underestimates the grave difficulties of what passed and the problems facing the Government leaders and the leaders of the Tamil United Liberation Front, and all other responsible politicians who seek to create a peaceful, prosperous and unitary Sri Lanka.
In that task, I should like to pay a special tribute to the efforts of the Indian Government and their representative. India's relations with Sri Lanka are well known. There are Tamils in India, and there are close links between those two countries on that basis. The Indian Government's representative, Mr. Parthasarathy, played a very helpful role during those months, and his contribution as an intermediary deserves recognition, which I happily extend.
We now have some results. I am glad to tell the House that as a result of developments, an all-party conference has been convened for 10 January 1984, and representatives of the Tamil United Liberation Front will be invited to it. I very much hope that the hon. Gentleman welcomes that development, given his concern for the Tamils.

Mr. Nellist: rose—

Mr. Whitney: I shall not give way, as the hon. Gentleman took up more time than was his ration In what is the last debate of the year.
The hon. Gentleman was concerned about the two parties that he seems to favour with still more vigour, the JVP and the NSSP. It has been announced that those two proscribed political parties will be invited to attend if the security situation permits. Therefore, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will use whatever influence he has—I do not know whether he has any influence with those parties—to urge them to recognise the attachment that he now declaims to non-violent political progress. If violence is renounced, I am hopeful that all the political parties in Sri Lanka can move together to restore peace and unity. I hope that he shares that aspiration.
Our long-standing relationship with Sri Lanka is one of friendship and good will to all the community. The subject of the debate is our attitude to human rights in Sri Lanka. We have consistently made our view clear. For example, in the aftermath of the violence in the summer, a demarche was made to the Government of Sri Lanka on behalf of the 10 countries of the EC, which included our views and expressed the hope that the Sri Lanka Government would safeguard the fundamental rights of the individual in all circumstances. The Presidency representatives drew attention to the concern in Europe at the violence, arid conveyed the sympathy of the people of Europe to the people of Sri Lanka as a whole at that most difficult time.
In addition to our links with Sri Lanka through the Community, we have still deeper links through our Commonwealth connections. Most recently, President Jayawardene issued another statement in Colombo on returning from the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting which suggested that if the Tamil United Liberation Front was prepared to give up its call for a separate state an acceptable solution of the Tamil problem could be worked out.
Thus, I believe that the omens are favourable. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will shed his Marxist blinkers, widen his vision, extend congratulations on what has been achieved in a very difficult situation, and will withdraw the call that he seems to have made—if I understood him correctly — for us to suspend our economic development aid programme to the Sri Lankan Government. I ask him to understand that the Victoria dam—a major £100 million project—will contribute to the electricity supply for the whole of the island and will benefit Sri Lankans of all ethnic origins.
That is the way forward, and that is the way to sustain and strengthen the democracy for which, as I said in July, Sri Lanka has been justly proud for 50 years. I know that democracy is a plant that tends to wither in the hands of the hon. Gentleman's comrades—

Mr. Nellist: Name them.

Mr. Whitney: —but we support democracy, and look forward to its continued flourishing in Sri Lanka.

Mr. Speaker: Before I adjourn the House, I should like to express my warmest good wishes to hon. Members on both sides of the House and to the staff of the House who serve us so faithfully and well. I hope that everyone will have a very happy Christmas and a most successful new year.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly a twenty-nine minutes past Three o'clock till Monday 16 January, pursuant to the resolution of the House of 19 December.